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“Okay, okay. I’m done hyperventilating now. And so…”
“And so I’ll have you flown to Seattle on New Year’s Eve.”
“In a small aircraft,” she said uneasily.
“As long as you’re okay with flying, I’ll provide the distractions.”
“I don’t know…you said it’s always in use.”
“If it isn’t available, I’ll charter a private jet. Worse comes to worst, I’ll take a few days off and we’ll take a drive down to the border to skirt the Cascades, then head up the coast.”
“You?”
“Or I’ll hire someone,” he said after a beat, shrugging. He knew he wouldn’t hire anyone. If anyone was going on a long road trip with Paula, it was going to be him.
She didn’t respond to that, just gazed out the window. “I guess,” she said whimsically, “I guess Proformers is a big company.”
“We employ a little under six hundred,” he admitted. “If you call that big.” His take was comparable to the income from his trust fund, but he didn’t tell her that, worried about sending her into another choking fit.
“What is it?” he said when he sensed her gaze on him again just as he was switching lanes to turn onto Highland Hill.
“Oh...I don’t know how you do it. Teach and research and work at your own company. All that commuting and switching gears. That sounds like an evil pace to keep up, day after day.”’
The sympathy in her words surprised him. He felt something in him ease, something tight that he hadn’t been consciously aware of.
Most people took his crazy schedule for granted. They assumed he delegated everything and ran things from his phone.
“It can get intense. But as to the commuting, I’m only in the condo when I have business on campus. That’s maybe two days a week. The rest of the time I’m based in my house, closer to downtown.”
“I begin to see why you’re always in a hurry,” she said slowly. “And why…” Her voice drifted off.
“Why…” he prompted.
“Why you haven’t been very neighborly. It’s not your home, the condo, is it? Just a place to sleep. It’s more like a hotel for you.”
“That’s right.” He paused, then confessed, “I don’t associate with people in my home neighborhood either.”
“Oh. Why is that?”
“No time.”
“Really? No time to be friendly?”
He shrugged. “I have work.”
“Man, I’d hate that life.”
“Something wrong with hard work?”
“Insofar as it takes over every single part of your life, hell, yes.”
“That sounds like the voice of experience talking.”
He felt her gaze on him as she said quietly, “Everyone used to envy me my glam pajama job. And yeah, the pay was great, and not having to deal with all the good-old-boy crap, but....”
“What good old boy crap?” He had no idea what she was talking about.
“Oh, computers are still a male-dominated industry, didn’t you know? Being a female comes with the usual hazards, especially in an office environment. A black female? That makes it extra special. Working at home, though, it’s not so bad. Your performance is all they care about. But I still had to fly in often, and the seventeen hour days were murder on my blood pressure.”
