Trade Me (11 page)

Look, Dad. I’m okay. I like this girl. Everything’s normal.

“Only my father,” I say to Tina, “would imagine that anyone could find paperwork arousing.”

“What?” Her smile is a touch too wide, a little too faked. “Don’t tell me your media training didn’t cover this, either.”

I set the stack of papers on the flat surface of my desk and gesture Tina to sit in the leather-bound executive chair.

“What am I supposed to say, then? Come on, baby. It’s a nondisclosure agreement. You’ll like it. I promise.”

She gives me an unimpressed look. “God,” she says. “And I thought you were supposed to be a
good
liar. That’s not how you do it.” She bites her lip and then she leans toward me. Her eyelashes sweep down, and when she talks, she lowers her voice toward sultry.

“I don’t know, Blake.” She bites her lip and reaches gingerly for the papers, stroking her thumb along the edge. “It’s so…big. I’m not sure it will fit.”

I almost choke. She looks up with a touch of a smile.

Fuck. I started this.

“We’ll go nice and slow.” I pull a chair beside her and sit down, and very slowly take a pen from the holder. “Tell me if it hurts and I can stop anytime. I promise.”

“Be gentle.”

I know we’re just joking. I know this doesn’t mean anything. Still, my body doesn’t know this is a show when I lean toward her. I don’t feel like I’m lying when I inhale the sent of her hair. It goes straight to my groin, a stab of lust. “Trust me,” I murmur.

She’s sitting in my chair. She’s smaller than me and all that dark leather surrounds her, blending in with her hair. But when she looks up, tilting her head toward me, she doesn’t seem tiny. She pulls the first paper-clipped section of pages to her, glances at the first paragraph, and wrinkles her nose.

“Ouch,” she says in a much less sensual tone of voice. “It hurts already.”

“It basically says that if you tell anyone anything about Cyclone business, we get one of your kidneys,” I translate helpfully.

“How sweet.” She hasn’t looked up from the document. “Do your lawyers know you summarize their forms like that?”

“Disclose two things,” I say, “and we get two kidneys.”

“Mmm. Playing rough. What happens if I disclose three? You shut down my dialysis machine?”

“You get a commemorative Cyclone pen,” I say mock-seriously. “Come on. We’re not monsters.”

She cracks a smile at that. She’s not one of those girls who always smiles, and that means that when she
does
smile, it means something. Her whole face lights up and my breath catches at the sight. I lean in, as if I could breathe in her amusement. But then she drops her head and goes back to reading. When she finishes, she signs with a flourish.

“What’s next?” she says. “Bring it on.”

I hand over the next few pages.

WARNING, the cover sheet states in big, red block letters. YOUR CONDUCT IS GOVERNED BY THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT AND REGULATIONS OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE COMMISSION. FAILURE TO COMPLY MAY RESULT IN CRIMINAL SANCTIONS AND SENTENCES OF UP TO TWENTY YEARS IN PRISON.

She holds it up and looks at me. “Don’t lie to me, baby. I bet you make all the girls you bring in here sign this.”

You know what? I have never before found SEC regulations this sexy. I lean close to her.

“No way,” I murmur. “This is just for you.”

“Really?” She manages that look of hurt skepticism so well. I reach out, almost touching her cheek—until I remember that this isn’t real.

“No,” I whisper back. “Not really. Everyone does sign it; it’s company policy.”

“Oh, too bad.” She’s still reading the page. “I was hoping you had a selective disclosure just for me.”

Selective,
I realize, is a sexy word when drawn out the way she does it, her tongue touching her lips on the
l
sound. So is
disclosure.

“I can disclose,” I hear myself saying. “Selectively.”

“Maybe you can give it to me in a material and nonpublic place.”

I lean toward her. “You know me. I put the
inside
in insider trading.”

She’s still holding the pen poised above the paper. I touch my finger to the cap and then slowly slide it down the barrel until my hand meets hers. A shock of electricity hits me, followed by a jolt of lust.

She’s looking into my eyes. If I hooked my hand under the arm of her chair, I could slide her toward me.

She drops the pen and pulls away.

“No, but seriously.” Her voice returns to normal. “I have no idea what any of this stuff actually means.”

I let out a breath. Damn. It’s a good thing this is only going to last an afternoon. More than that, and I’d forget we were pretending.

I clear my throat and straighten. “Basically it comes down to this: don’t trade Cyclone stock without talking to your lawyer. Don’t tell anyone shit about Cyclone’s business without talking to your lawyer.”

“I don’t have a lawyer.”

“Well. Get one before you do either of those things.”

She makes a face.

It takes us half an hour to get through the rest of the forms. I leave her to get them checked off with legal, and then to get Dad’s sign-off on the prototype. Dad had someone stack everything else I need in a bag. Everything but Fernanda. That he hands to me.

“Have fun showing off your baby,” he says.

And you know what? I actually feel nervous at this moment. Nervous, excited—like I’m about to tell her something important to me. Like I want her to approve.

Five minutes later, I heft the bag onto the table in front of her. “There are these.”

“What are they?”

“Enh.” I wave my hand dismissively. “A phone. A tablet. Shit like that. Nothing big.”

“Nothing big?” Her eyes widen.

“I mean, they’re just the next generation versions. No big deal. Early prototypes just mean there are more bugs to work through.” I’m cradling Fernanda in my hands. “And you can play with them all you want. Later.”

“But
I
have never owned a Cyclone tablet—”

“It’s called a Squall.”

“Whatever. Or any tablet all. Maybe I want to…”

“No,” I say. “You don’t.”

She trails off as I open my hand. Her eyes widen, and she leans in. “Oooh,” she says in a much quieter voice. “The wild rumors are true.”

Fernanda fits in the palm of my hand, the round watch face set in gleaming steel.

“Tina,” I say, “meet Fernanda. Fernanda, this is Tina.”

She waits a beat. “Is it supposed to answer?”

“Of course not,” I say. “She’s a watch, not a portable artificial intelligence. We’re not that advanced. Hold out your arm.”

She does.

I roll up her sweater.

Her wrist is tiny; the bones in her hand seem so delicate. And suddenly in this moment, I’m hit by another wave of want. I want this to be real. I want to be that smiling man who has no plans but to give her a present—the world’s coolest present—and have her agree that it’s awesome.

I knew I was into her. I knew I was attracted to her. But right now, looking into her face, I want her. All of her. Her smiles, rare though they are. Her approval. I can feel her pulse in her wrist. Given everything going on between us right now, wanting what I do is incredibly fucked up.

Her eyes are on my hands. “Everyone thinks you aren’t making one because you didn’t announce when your competitors put out their first generation smartwatches.”

I slide the band around her wrist. This band is preproduction steel, not one of the stylish bands that will be available for the coming launch. Her skin is soft, and her breath catches as I latch the watch in place.

“We never announce products before they’re ready,” I say. “And she wasn’t ready.”

“Why is the project called Fernanda?”

“Happenstance. All Cyclone products are given production codenames. We draw them in order from the NOAA tropical cyclone lists the year they enter active development.”

“Do you anthropomorphize them all, then?”

“Of course,” I say. “I practically grew up at Cyclone. New products are as close as I ever came to having a dog.”

She laughs.

“But Fernanda is my favorite,” I whisper to her. “She’s special. I was completely in charge of her, from her inception until a year ago.”

“What makes her so cool?”

“Everything. Here, turn her on.”

She touches the face of her watch and it sparks to life. It asks her to register her fingerprints and she does.

“The real challenge for a smartwatch is the input,” I tell her. “Of course, there’s a touch-sensitive screen. But my team and I also came up with this—the entire circumference of the watch is a biometric ring, one that only responds to the user’s fingers so it won’t be triggered by a cuff or a stray brush. You can use it to dial volume or scroll music, just by running your finger back and forth on the rim of the watch.”

I demonstrate. Doing that requires me to guide her fingers. To hold her wrists in mine and stand close. To inhale the sweet scent of her hair. And she smiles again as she gets the hang of it.

“Okay,” she says, looking up at me. “That’s officially cool.”

My smile is quick in response.

“It gets cooler,” I say. “Here’s the contact tap.” I roll up my sleeve, revealing my watch. I set my thumb to mine, gesture to her to do likewise, and then tap my watch against hers.

Her contact information appears on my watch face.

“That’s also cool.”

“Isn’t it?” I can’t stop smiling. “The only uncool thing about Fernanda is that I have to keep her under wraps for now. And now you know the real reason I’ve been wearing suits on campus. If you wear a sweatshirt when it’s 95 out, everyone thinks you’re crazy. Nobody blinks about a button-down shirt, though, and I have to keep her covered somehow. But I haven’t shown you the best part yet.”

Her eyebrows rise. “There’s a better part?”

“Yeah. So imagine that we want a true smartwatch—something that is a stand-alone device, and not just a satellite tethered to a smart phone. Without a proper input mechanism, it’s just a niche product. You can’t text on this small a screen. You can’t do much more than scroll and click, which makes it worth…very little, actually. We realized that if we wanted a real smartwatch, we needed to make Fernanda do one thing, and do it well.”

Tina leans forward.

“Video.”

She looks taken aback. “You’re kidding.”

“I know. We did a ton of usability studies. Video on a computer is bad enough. Video on a watch is incredibly awkward. So I want to see what you think of our solution.”

She looks up at me. “You know, Blake, I think you’re more turned on by this than you were by dirty talk about SEC regulations. I am beginning to suspect that you are a dork. What will your many fans say?”

“My many fans, as you call them, probably figured out I was a dork when I voluntarily spent all my time immersed in interface design from the age of fourteen,” I say dryly. “I’m about to get even more dorkily excited. Beware.”

I walk outside the room and cross the hall. She can still see me, but we’re farther away.

Dad sees me tapping my watch and gives his head a wry shake. I press call.

A few seconds later, her face takes up my watch screen.

“Nobody wants a video app on a goddamned watch.” I hold my wrist in front of my face. “You have to use your wrist to center the camera, and who wants to talk to someone with your arm held awkwardly like this?”

She nods. “Exactly.”

“That’s why,” I say, “Fernanda has six independent cameras in her face, her band, and even the clasp. And they’re not stationary. They swivel, and they sync with the internal gyroscopes to track the user’s movements. On-the-fly interpolation and facial-recognition software means that I can move my arm like this—or like this—” I demonstrate “—and the video on your screen…”

“Tracks your face,” she finishes breathlessly. “That is freaking awesome.”

“Ha,” I say smugly. “I could show you more if we had more people around. We can manage up to five-way video calling—more than that looks terrible on the screen. You’re going to love Fernanda. And if there’s anything you
don’t
love about her, tell us and we’ll see if we can fix it.”

She nods.

“The video angle can sometimes still be awkward, depending on how you’re waving your hand, but you get used to the reasonable range of motion really quickly.”

Our eyes meet. We’re twenty feet away. Still, my chest feels tight. I’m not pretending. If my father is watching the way I’m looking at her now, he will never guess the truth.

Hell. I’m standing in the hall in front of the office that used to belong to Peter, and I’m still smiling.

I’m not sure
I
can tell that we’re not together, and I’m in on the secret.

TINA

The bridge over the Bay crosses dull, gray water. The sun is low in the sky; Blake’s car is freakishly silent, gliding along with only the whisper of tires against road. I can’t get used to how quiet his car is.

I’m trying to sort myself back into place. No more pretending. No more touching. No more acting. We got what we wanted, right?

I can’t make out anything about him. I had assumed he didn’t get along with his father; instead, they seemed to be genuinely friendly. He said he wanted to get away from Cyclone, but when he put Fernanda on my wrist, his eyes sparkled with real pride.