| Scene/time | Maura | Carlos | How? |
| Beginning | Worn out, skeptical, too busy for dating, focusing on tasks only. | Discussion with Janet? Matt? | |
| First mention of Carlos | She mistrusts him. He was one of Donald’s minions. In the background, suspect. | He’s mentioned by an angel investor | |
| Conversation | First talks go well. | Carlos is hiding attraction. He’s always had it. Maura is thinking she needs to compromise for his skills, but still mistrusts him. | Matt talks to Maura and Carlos separately |
| Working together | Maura is grateful for his input. | Carlos is happy for proximity but knows to hide his attraction | Progress reports with Matt. Meetings. |
| More working together | |||
Please Call
January 2020
Until the “please call,” Matt Kenny was having one of those special Oregon mornings he dearly loved. Up early, close to dawn. Quiet house. Janet sound asleep for another hour or so, to be wakened up when one or another of their daughters would probably call. His Mini-Cooper, iPod playing slow sixties folk rock, radar detector on, quietly urging him to enjoy the empty streets (hence the radar detector) with a sharp turn, a quick burst of gas. The landscape in shades of gray and dark green typical of cool and cloudy mornings in Eugene. Layers of clouds settled into the forested hill like fingers. Ground fog clung to the flat meadow of Amazon Park two feet over the ground, five feet high, like some kind of ethereal blanket. In the distance, a small break in the clouds lightened Spencer’s Butte, speckled with off-angle sun. He stopped on the way, as always, at the coffee cart where they knew him and his daily order, and kept his signature on file, so he could skip the clipboard step. He kept quarters in the side of the door, one per day, as a tip. Life was good.
He loved his office in the early mornings, before the others arrived, before the phone calls. Just him, the keyboard, the computer, his coffee, and his “mellow morning” playlist loud, no need to plug in the damn earphones. Folk, folk rock, blues. Emmy Lou Harris singing Boulder to Birmingham. Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee singing Bring it on Home to Me. Another new day. New emails. Blog posts. His metrics too, blog subscribers, Twitter followers, the brave new world of constant scorekeeping.
But this morning it didn’t last. His phone showed a text from Maura Benson:
“Please call as soon as you can. Deal’s dead.”
Damn. He’d heard a beep from his phone while driving, then forgot it as he parked and set up in the office
There was no ducking Maura. She was totally 2020. Maura, communicator par excellence, techie, social media maven, and thorough. Matt, however, had a whole lot of the 80s and 90s still in him. And he wasn’t always quick to answer.
Still, he didn’t call immediately. He first sat back, sipped his coffee, focused on the pine tree a few feet outside his second-floor window, and watched the cars starting to show up, just one at a time, on the corner of 11th and Ferry, below his office. He closed his eyes, took a long deliberate slow breath, and exhaled. He listened to another slow country rock song. He got ready to call about bad news.
He didn’t believe the deal was really done. He expected to convince her that she was over reacting. She’d already had two fabulous sessions with the angel investors. And, more important than just the sessions, she had a real business started. There was real need, a real market, great potential. Her team seemed strong. Matt thought hers was one of the strongest deals they’d seen in years. Great product-market fit, huge potential market, scalable, defensible, and a great team.
He’d learned the pause first from of decades of “please call” messages from Janet, his wife. They’d reach him in hotels during his too-frequent business trips when the kids were young. The calls back followed a pattern. Matt, exhausted by clients, tension, taxis, airports, and hotels, would call Janet, exhausted by kids, lunches, homework, bedtimes, messes, dishes, cooking, shopping, overwhelmed, waiting for him to call, anxious to share some disaster. He’d think he was thousands of miles away, also exhausted, having nothing but work stress. She’d think he was done with his day and alone in a hotel. He’d often say one wrong thing or another, going defensive. Then he’d feel like a five-year-old kid with lunch all over his ill-fitting shirt as Janet hung up angry. That would kill the good feelings he’d get during lonely travel by dreaming of Janet naked and happy. Those were not the best times between Janet and him. Work, stress, sleep deprivation, and distance do not make couples’ hearts grow fonder.
After he settled himself, Matt called Maura.
It Can’t Be That
Matt’s return call caught Maura driving, in traffic on the beltline, with Jack in the back seat. She’d wanted to talk to Matt all night, but she rejected the call quickly, almost automatically. Why? Her finger was faster than her head, leaving her with a lingering question, which she felt but didn’t voice, not even silently to herself, in her head. Why not? She needed to talk to him. He would help her track down the problem with the deal. Why not answer?
She would have loved to talk the night before, after Jack was asleep; but couldn’t talk in the middle of the morning rush, getting seven-year-old Jack to school.
All night she replayed that last meeting with the due diligence team. She was in shock. Before that, she and her startup were the darlings of the season, shoe-ins for the half million dollars the SWAG angel group was getting ready to invest. What happened? Sabotage? Bad faith? Could she prove her software was really hers? Didn’t she develop it as an employee at TK? And why was she hiding her legal problems?
Would Matt know anything? He might. He knew most of the SWAG investors. He was pretty much tapped in. But he’d never let on about any worries, had never seemed concerned. And she couldn’t call him yesterday early enough to really talk. She had to pick up Jack, then dinner, and bedtime for him, and then it was too late.
But when Matt’s call call rang in over the bluetooth in the car, she didn’t realize at first that she didn’t actually want to talk to Matt; at least, not yet. She was anxious to talk about the deal problem when it first came up. But in the meantime she’d grappled with what she feared was the real problem. One she didn’t want to mention.
First thought: Problems. Bad news. There’s traffic, I’m distracted, and I’ll take it later. Too much going on. Am I afraid of bad news?
Second thought: Jack was in the back seat. Car calls were speaker calls. But he was plugged into his Kindle fire. She often took calls like that.
Realization – or was it worry: Donald. That recurring image of Donald promising revenge, the night she moved out. Standing, arms folded, filled with ice-cold resolve. Not sadness, not regret, not even anger. Empty but for desire to punish. And bone cold.
She’d spent all night stewing, avoiding voicing that worry even to herself in the middle of the night. This was angel investment, Syphon, a new startup, nothing to do with Donald. New life. And the investors loved it. Didn’t they?
Maura, going on four years now since the divorce, never ever talked about divorce or Donald to anybody but family and closest friends. She hated the thought that she’d look predictable, like the stereotypical divorced mom blaming things on her ex. That wasn’t her.
Besides, she’d told herself, repeatedly, nobody who didn’t know Donald well would believe her stories. Far fetched. A divorced woman blaming her ex. So predictable. Trite. She was better than that. She never shared stories. When asked, she was deadpan. Yes, divorced. Yes, a seven-year-old son. Single mom. Change the subject. She hated talking to outsiders about Donald. And who would believe her anyhow?
She wanted to think she was just being paranoid, which is what she told herself, as Jack fiddled with the playlist on her phone, not talking, leaving her to her thoughts. Why take it back to Donald? It was business.
She tried not to, but kept going back to the memory of Donald, three years earlier.
“You will regret this for the rest of your life,” he told her. “I will make your life miserable.”
He stood at the top of a small flight of stairs, a few steps between different levels in his (it was never really theirs, always his) trophy house. She carried a box of essentials she’d need to stay with her parents. He watched carefully, silent, arms folded, like a parent watching a disobedient child, or homeowner watching a household servant suspected of pilfering silverware. He was tall, wore glasses, had wavy brown hair over a high forehead. By then she had long forgotten his original air of the stereotype nerd, the brilliant computer geek, the successful entrepreneur. He’d taken on a new cloak, his fictional version of the stern all-powerful, all-knowing, higher being.
She knew, without question, from her bones outward, that Donald’s promise was not an empty threat; it was simple hard truth. Donald wasn’t angry, at least not the way normal people are angry. This wasn’t going to go away like it would have with nine out of 10 fathers angered by the mother splitting up with them. This was Maura blowing up Donald’s carefully constructed fiction in which he was the Internet millionaire, she the beautiful blonde, the parents of Jack, the happy couple.
So she let the call go. Not now. Not in traffic. Not with Jack in the car, she thought. I’ll collect myself first, then talk.
Never Ever Weather
Matt and Janet had been together so long they’d argue about the weather, or what was normal. They had a classic mismatch of approaches. Janet always summarized towards the dramatic, like “it’s never this hot.” Matt was the king of the counter example, of when it had been. “Oh, come on, there are always two or three days in May … ”
Janet would quickly settle into an assumed expertise. “Don’t go to Spain in April. It’s still too cold.” Matt would immediately envision the counter examples, southern Spain vs. northern Spain. The weather is variable in April. They have hot days too.
And then there was data. Matt was always able to find data to counter prove Janet. But never before she had moved on to another subject and lost interest.
Periférico
Damn. Stuck in traffic again. Celia hated the traffic in Mexico City. She sat stopped dead on the Periférico, which had been built as a high-rise freeway connecting the north and south of the city along its west side, but had been a glorified parking lot for years.
She tried to just breathe, inhale and exhale, and wait. But there was a special claustrophobia to traffic jams. Would she be stuck for hours between exits? It happened to her a few times a year. Just a couple of months earlier she left Carlos’s office at McKinsey in Las Lomas, just a few hundred meters from the Periférico entrance, at 3; and was stuck between exits on the Periférico for almost four hours. Celia believed in the soft voice of Gil Fronsdale from the Zencast podcasts, the calm, just breathing, peace. But damn! Not when stuck in traffic. Not with the fear of sitting there. And would she have to pee? Could she hold it? Try meditating that, she told herself.
She also told herself she should have just stayed in her apartment and dealt with Maura’s puzzling message. Why risk the traffic? She liked her office better than home mostly for bandwidth, and her main computer, plus the camaraderie. She worked better there than in the cramped apartment down in Santa Teresa. But damn.
She did have decent cellphone bars, at least. She rechecked Maura’s message in Whatsapp:
“We need to Skype. The deal is in trouble.”
She did call in Skype, immediately, but Maura didn’t answer. She guessed (correctly) that she was taking her kid to school. She knew she was a single mom. So she decided to take off for the office in the meantime. Damn. Bad guess. Bad traffic.
Mexico City. Her home. Her birthplace. Where her mom, her sisters, and their kids lived. She loved them, loved the memories, but hated the city now. Maybe the world’s largest city, but who could count. The largest is either this one, Shanghai, or San Paulo. She’d been to San Paulo once, found it like Mexico, sprawling, ugly, smoggy, livable only for people like her mom and sisters, rooted there. Shanghai looked pretty in pictures – mainly at night, with all the lights. She’d seen scary pictures of Shanghai’s smog during the day.
Traffic remained still. Parking lot. You could literally get pizza delivered while stuck in traffic. They used motorcycles. She remembered the TV skit, people selling their car stuck in traffic to buy one that was stuck closer to their destination. Being caught again put a lump in her throat. Worry about Maura’s crisis. She couldn’t lose Maura, it was the best job she’d had in years, and they connected so well. And there was hope of getting back to the U.S. if Syphon took off.
What could Maura be worried about? She’d seemed very optimistic, almost euphoric,
She flashed back, often, to that time in the plane, just a year earlier, sitting with Carlos of course, both of them recently graduated from Stanford, her with the CS degree and Carlos the MBA. They were both from Mexico City, but they’d met at Stanford. They were married, basking in family, back home over the previous summer. But they’d lived on campus at Stanford. Which was paradise compared to Mexico City.
That memory wouldn’t clear. As the plane took off from San Francisco, they held hands.
“Oh no,” Celia said, softly. “Are we really going back?” She felt mostly dread. She wanted Carlos to cheer her up, remind her, his job was great, they’d be rich, they’d live close to the office, in Las Lomas, tree lined, nice apartment, close to work, immune by being walking distance from all the commuting. But Celia couldn’t help it. After four years at Stanford, it was like going from a bright well-lit place, sunshine on the mostly brown hills, bicycles on wide campus paths, to a dark dystopia, smog and traffic.
She’d forced herself to go along with it. For Carlos. For more than a year, since they became a couple, they’d dreamed together about his MBA recruiting season. It was the ultimate happiness, like Samuel Johnson had said, which was the anticipation of happiness. Profs and counselors reinforced the dream. Recruiters confirmed it. They were going to be rich. When that turned out to be McKinsey Management Consulting in Mexico City, Carlos was so proud. He’d landed a prime job, a status job, better than all but a handful of his MBA classmates. McKinsey was the best. It meant salary, company car, even school tuition when kids came. And mobility. Carlos talked of levering the Mexico City Celia loved Carlos so much it hurt and she wasn’t going to
Carlos smiled ruefully, squeezed her hand, loved her soft touch and brilliant eyes. Loved her also when she was quiet, pensive, like she was right then.
Maura, Driving, Alone with Sadness
With Jack dropped off, Maura headed back towards downtown to meet with Matt for coffee. Alone, driving, she let herself fall into sadness. She felt the lump in her throat.
She’d fought that temptation most of her life. Then a friend – it might have been Janet – passed on a second-hand suggestion, something she’d heard in a zen podcast or maybe read in a blog post:
“We’re programmed to fight the sadness,” she said. “That doesn’t work. You have to have the emotion, acknowledge it, let it live there in you, and swim in it. Then it flows through you, and you go on.
So Maura did. Her eyes moistened, but she still changed lanes and made her exit. She remembered her illusions, in college, her early dating, the romantic comedies and love stories, the dreams and fantasies. She’d never had the schoolgirl moments, not even in the beginning. Dating, fiancé, bride, honeymoon, she’d waited for passion that never came. She had passed forty without ever coming really alive, not even for a few minutes, with that kind of love. Would that never happen?
But she had Jack. There would have been no Jack without Donald. And then she had to find a parking space and go find Matt in Café Sienna.
Natalie Yalonis: Background
Role in Story: Unwitting villain’s henchman, does the dirty work but with more conviction than malice.
Occupation: Salesperson turned entrepreneur.
Physical Description: She’s almost 40, dark skinned, thin, very attractive to those who like thin. Intense dark brown eyes. Long dark brown hair. Imagine an animation in which a spider morphs into a woman. She’s Morticia dressed in West Coast startup chíc.
Personality: Spend an hour with her and you know all about her, but she knows very little about you. She’s one of those. Relentless when pursuing a goal, like recruiting a donation for a local non-profit, recruiting a keynote speaker, gathering angel investors together, speaking for local groups of startups, chambers of commerce, and incubators. She
Habits/Mannerisms: Natalie brought New Jersey Italian with her wherever she went. She cultivated the Jersey girl image, brandished her Jersey Italian persona with pride, and occasionally with an accent she can call on, or extinguish, at will. She’s very quick to make what she’d like to be discussion-ending pronouncements. She’s likely to quietly and confidentially disclose what’s wrong about anybody you know who has fallen out of favor, but she does so discretely, with innuendo, and a talent for a good story. She’s loyal to people who can advance her cause, until they can no longer advance her cause.
Background:
Internal Conflicts:
External Conflicts:
Notes:
Maura Benson: Background
Role in Story: Protagonist
Occupation: Wants to start a new business. Has been a social media success, worked with a Klout-like company. Is looking to build a new company.
Physical Description: Early 40s, blonde like somebody who was born blonde, very blonde as a kid grown up into highlights and dirty natural blonde now. She’s 5’10” with a face that still shows the cherubic child, the one that looked like a classic doll-like child at 3. She was born in Mexico, where her childhood self would occasionally stop people on the street. tempered by life, though. She was gorgeous at 20, but never thought of herself like that, so she didn’t use make-up, wasn’t big on dating.
Personality: The only one who didn’t understand how amazing Maura is, is Maura herself. She’s likely to linger in the background. She’ll let others lead the conversation. She’s brilliant. She was phi beta kappa at Stanford. She’s a natural mediator, comes from a large family, was often called on to help
Habits/Mannerisms: Maura waits for others to move, plays a background role, tends to sandbag a conversation by waiting in the background until the rime to move, and then she comes on strong and powerful if it’s about her areas of competence, or her child. She often lets others be right when it doesn’t matter.
Background: Raised in Palo Alto, youngest of five, very smart, phi beta kappa at Stanford. Her father John started a software company in Palo Alto. She saw the struggles, thought she’d never be an entrepreneur, but of course events led her there. She was an early helicopter child, very loyal to her parents. Maura’s fiery mother is Mexican, Angelina, a fireball, gorgeous when they met at Notre Dame.
Maura married Donald out of Stanford. He’d been a founder of a networking company, Netpower. He bowled her over, not just with limos and such, but with kindness, with intellect, he seemed the ideal suitor. The honeymoon was disappointing, as she dealt with his character, darkness, the real Donald. His love of Netpower, he wanted her to do the parenting, he’d never been affectionate, and their son was born with a disability called developmental dyspraxia. Maura felt steadily more alone as she developed her own life, he ended up as a revenge character.
Internal Conflicts: She deeply regrets marrying Donald because she felt dumb, deceived; but she loves her son. She struggles
External Conflicts: The main plot. Notes:
TimeLine
When What
| 2002 | Maura Graduates from Stanford. Works at WordPower blogging platform. Donald moves to Silicon Valley with his partner. |
| 2004: | Maura meets Donald. Dating experience. |
| Maura marries Donald, just three months later. Starts freelance writing small business articles. Her mother hated her dropping her job. | |
| SoShall goes public. Donald takes jets on test drives, installs servers, builds his fortress. | |
| 2005: | SoShall tanked. Donald goes deep dive. Maura continues to freelance. Fascinated by blogging in general. Donald doesn’t want her working. Donald can preserve his vision of ideal family. Donald makes a living consulting. Chinese are his best clients. |
| 2007: | Donald gets MeetYUP funded. Virtual teamworks for enterprises. Wants Maura to work for him there, but only part time, and controlled. She meets Nate, his VP development. Has friction over Nate’s sloppy approach, overpromising. |
| 2007: | Jack is born. It’s really John Peter, but Donald insists on Jack, and not John Joseph, like Maura’s father. Maura’s desire to continue working is a source of tension between her and Donald. She drops out, happily. |
| 2010: | MeetYUP isn’t growing. Maura discovers Donald is good at fundraising but doesn’t actually do the work. Nate and Donald have a falling out, Donald is furious at Maura for talking to Nate. Nate is doing all the work. Nate complains to Maura often. Maura is frustrated with Donald’s objections to child care, Jack seems neglected. Maura talks to her dad. |
| Taxes come down hard on Donald. | |
| 2011: | February: Donald is angry about everything, retreats … taxes become a big deal … he ignores Jack. |
| May. The Divorce. Jack is 4. Donald issues threats. | |
| 2012: | Maura takes fulltime job with WordPower. Struggling with single parenting and Donald’s lack of cooperation. She meets Matt and Janet at WordPower. |
| 2014: | Maura comes up with Syfon. Late at night. She finds Celia. Early on she’s approached by Nate Yalonis to join. He heard she was looking. She doesn’t trust him. He bad-mouths Donald and MeetYUP. She talks to WordPower. Gets permission. |
| 2014 | She learns from the nanny and yacht captain and freaks out. Contempt of court and makeup time. |
| 2015: | Maura makes progress. Meeting with bosses at WordPower. |
| 2016: | April: a high point. The presentation for SWAG. Everything looking good. |
| May: The opening scene takes place in 2016. The low point. Nate, now financed by Donald, files suit against Syfon for using software owned by MeetYUP, developed by MeetYUP under his supervision. then by claiming software ownership as he jumps. | |
| June: Matt lands client #1. Donald sues for custody of Jack. | |
| October: the trial. Highs and lows. | |
| November: Matt lands client #2 | |
| 2017: | Maura hires. Business is growing. |
| Coffee with Dan, Matt, and Maura. Apply for SWAG 2017. Nope. | |
| Celia and Carlos in Zihua, March. | |
| Matt and Janet figure it out | |
| 2017 | Celia’s interview. Matt and Janet get their money back, in spades. |
The synopsis
The Deal is Dead
It’s May of 2016. It seemed like Maura and Syfon were ready to go, about to get a half million dollars from SWAG angel investors, when suddenly something has gone terribly wrong.
Maura’s first pitch had gone well. Her first pitch to SWAG had gone spectacularly well. During the following weeks, she’d been working well with the due diligence committee. Syfon had a credible team, some early traction, an interesting market, good prospects. Maura felt like a star. She’d given herself the luxury of enjoying the ride, at least briefly.
But in the last meeting, last night, the good vibe changed to eery suspicious silence. Maura fielded a series loaded questions, coming seemingly out of nowhere, at a point in due diligence when normally things were getting easier. There was doubt whether her software was really hers, or actually developed while she was employed by her ex husband. And there was a question about her personal legal problems, a reference, apparently, to a custody battle the previous year.
Clearly something is up, but what? New competition? Some fatal flaw? Or – much more likely, in Maura’s mind – sabotage. Somebody with an axe to grind. It might be Natalie Yalonis, former partner, with whom she had a falling out over questions of right and wrong, business ethics. Or it might be Donald Ford, her ex husband, still and always seeking revenge.
That first morning, the day after, as she shares the disastrous turn of events with Matt, her mentor, Maura suspects Caroline or Donald but can’t be sure. She tells Matt the story of Donald. Nobody would believe it.
Matt calls in some favors and gets the deep background. Angel groups keep these things confidential, for obvious reasons, but Matt knows most of the players. He finds out that Don Wilson, a SWAG member investor, lumber millionaire, has campaigned with the due diligence team. He claimed he was on to something the others didn’t know, about the software, and her. It was a smear campaign, innuendos. He had been silent, in the background, at the meeting. So where did he get that? And why? It doesn’t make sense. Neither Maura nor Matt have any history with Wilson, but this feels personal.
Wilson won’t talk to either of them. He doesn’t return calls.
The next day, Matt and Maura talk to their lawyer about the software ownership allegations. There is nothing there. It’s completely defensible.
At lunch after the meeting with the lawyer, Matt and Maura, still reeling, calculate next steps with the assumption that Syfon won’t get the money. First problem is what they do about Celia? She was going to be moving to the US and coming on full time, but can they do that without the SWAG? They discuss Matt’s efforts to land a sugar daddy first client.
Meanwhile, Celia and Carlos are struggling with the move. They both want it, but Carlos has a good job in Mexico City and no job in the US. Anti-immigrant sentiment worries him. His family is concerned about him moving or not based on his wife’s job. He’s a Stanford MBA.
And Janet’s worried that Matt is going to get caught in the crossfire. They argue. She knows Maura and has always liked her, but worries that Matt is making this one of his causes, and is going too far. Maybe he shouldn’t have given up his agency too early. Maybe this is about him, struggling, as he’s reached his sixties?
Then Maura gets Donald’s petition for more time with their son. The petition, a formal filing like a lawsuit, alleges that a boy needs his father. But does that make sense, given the serious custody evaluation of three years earlier? Or is it Donald lashing out? Was it prompted by the specter of Maura getting funded and outshining him?
Then the other shoe drops. And then Skip tips Matt to Natalie’s new company. Sounds like Syfon. Natalie’s the main founder, and Don Wilson and Donald Ford are backers.
Maura contemplates Syfon and her legal situation. More lawyer costs coming. And the SWAG deal is done. Money will be running short again.
The long uphill trail
Syfon was born from need. Problems and solutions. As the world
Maura and Donald
A great beginning
The first big fall
The second big fall
The custody evaluation
Matt and Janet
Another great beginning
You just blink
The dark wood
Celia and Carlos
Anticipation
The gift of the magi
The family dinner at Zihua
Unanswered prayers
Sprippets 