Page 23 of Technical Advances

“As you might have noticed, I can sometimes get lost in my work and forget to eat.”

“Yeah, I get that. It happens to me too.”

“So Beck would come around and make sure I ate a good meal every once in a while.”

“George’s Italian sub counts as a good meal?”

“It counts as a meal.” Anson was staring at the restaurant’s logo on the bag he had neatly folded.

“We first talked about starting a company together at George’s. He had a project for one of his classes, where he had to develop a prospectus for a new company as if it was being presented to a loan officer. We just got to talking.”

“I know this story. That school project was the basis for New Day Tech. Did that really happen at George’s? That’s so cool.”

“Only we never needed that loan, because I sold my cash exchange app before I’d even gotten my PhD.”

I sat at the table. Anson put the bag down and followed suit. “I know that too,” I said.

“There are three sandwiches here?” Anson’s eyes were on me again, those blue eyes looking for all the world like they saw more than a new employee.

You’re imagining things, I reminded myself, remembering young Benji staring into a pixilated version of those eyes.

“Choices,” I said, but the word caught in my throat as I stared back. “Um, I didn’t know what you would want, so I picked up a few things. We should have offered some to Beck, or, um … your assistant; was it Ross?”

Anson nodded and stood again, returning from the cabinet with a real honest-to-God steak knife.

He picked up one of the sandwiches. “A gobbler. Good choice,” he said as he opened it. He held the knife up. “We’ll share?”

“Yes, please.”

We opened all three sandwiches, both of us sampling a piece of each one. We sat at that table, in the near darkness, and didn’t once talk about Project Orthos.

Anson asked about MIT, remembering places and professors and stories from his time there and wondering how things had changed. He asked about my dad.

“I can’t believe I didn’t know you lived in the yellow house. Dad never told me! I guess, I mean, he doesn’t follow the tech news, or much news at all except for sports, so he didn’t know who you were.”

“The beige house,” Anson stated, scooping up a fallen piece of tomato and popping it in his mouth, which was definitely not the cutest thing I’d ever seen even though he actually emitted a popping sound as part of the move.

“Two doors down from us, around the circle? Definitely yellow, or at least it was when I was growing up, and when I was there last Christmas.”

“Huh. They must have painted it.”

“I’m glad you and dad were friends. The family that lives there now … they have a son my age too. But we never got along. He used to tease me when we were little and …”

“I’m sorry about that.”

I shrugged. “It happened.”

Anson looked up from his plate, gifting me with eye contact again. “Yes. It did.” We shared a knowing smile.

“When we got older, he, um, he used to threaten me, to get me to do his homework. It wasn’t difficult for me to do it, so he never really had to follow through on those threats, but this one time … I was usually good at not doing too good of a job, but I did a book report in tenth grade, and he got accused of cheating. It was a big deal. I told my dad the truth, and, well, after that I didn’t have to do his work for him anymore. And he never, like, hit me or anything, but … it wasn’t easy going to school with him or living near him, especially after that.” It was my turn to shrug. “The whole thing really upset my dad. Like, a lot.”

As if it was happening in slow motion, Anson’s hand, the one that he had recently popped against his pale-pink lips, reached out and rested atop mine. He just let it lie there as he spoke.

“I only knew him for a few short years, but your father, both of your parents, really, were always very kind to me. More than that, they looked out for me. Just so you know, he was never like that boy. Your dad was a good person.”

He squeezed my hand, and all of a sudden, I was the one who couldn’t make eye contact. I looked down at our layered hands instead.

“Thank you for saying that,” I started as I began to turn my hand into his. The movement startled him or made him realize what he’d done, or what I was about to do, because he snapped his hand back. I imagined a pop as I felt the loss of him.