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and I think it's about time we got married."
As Roberta babbled on, Susannah stared at herself in the mirror. Was it true? Was she only part of
SysVal because of Sam? Would she still want to pursue this impossible crusade if she weren't so
desperately in love with him?
Her hand spun the faucet and water splashed from the bowl onto the front of her slacks. SysVal was
hers, too, dammit! She had bought into Sam's dream. Somehow, along the way, she had begun to
believe that it could happen. Sam had called them the last buccaneers of America's twentieth century.
She wanted it to be true, and she wasn't going to let them take it away from her.
Leaving Roberta still chattering in the stall, she went back out to the booth, determined to make some
sort of stand, but only Yank was there, scribbling a diagram on the back of a napkin. Blaine and Sam
were playing video games. She watched as Sam let out a whoop and Blaine slapped him on the back, the
uptight millionaire executive suddenly as carefree as a teenager. She could almost feel the affinity
developing between them, that mysterious attraction of opposites as Mr. Establishment met Easy Rider.
She planned to talk to Sam when they got home to tell him how she felt about being closed out but he
and Blaine sat up until dawn weaving futuristic fantasies of how everyday life might be reshaped by a
small, affordable computer. They were still talking when she finally excused herself to go to bed.
The next day Blaine rented a car and moved into a hotel, but except for a few hours of sleep at night, he
spent all his time with Sam. The kinship they had developed continued to exclude her. Although they
argued frequently, and Blaine steadfastly resisted all of Sam's efforts to get him to commit to SysVal, the
bond between the men grew daily. Each seemed to provide something the other lacked. Sam was
attracted to Blaine's greater knowledge and breadth of experience Blaine to Sam's vision and poetry.
When she was finally able to corner Sam alone, she tried to talk to him about how she felt, but he
shrugged her off. "He's used to working with men, that's all. He's not ignoring you. You're making a big
deal out of nothing."
But she didn't think so. Blaine's aversion to her seemed to run deeper than a general prejudice against
women.
The next afternoon, while she was doing a shampoo for Angela, she heard Blaine and Sam on the other
side of the partition discussing the prototype. "The SysVal I is only a toy for hobbyists, Sam. If you want
to build a company, you're going to have to base it on that self-contained computer. Ordinary people
aren't going to want to hook up a television set and all sorts of other equipment to make their computer
work. Everything has to be in one piece, and it has to be simple. As soon as you get the funding lined up,
you have to get that machine on the market."
They talked about possible markets for the computer, and then Sam asked Blaine what he thought they
should name it.
"The most obvious name is the SysVal II," Blaine replied.
"Yeah, I suppose. I just wish we could come up with something more dramatic."
Sam had never asked her about a name for the new computer. Her resentment gnawed deeper. She
went to the library for a few hours to get away from both of them, but only ended up reading everything
she could find about Mitchell Blaine. What she discovered depressed her further. In addition to being an
outstanding engineer, he was considered a brilliant marketing strategist, respected by some of the most
important business analysts in the country. He was everything they could have hoped for and more.
Except there was no "they" as far as Blaine was concerned only Sam and Yank.
"You can't go back to Boston," Sam told Blaine the day before he was planning to leave. "Boston's old
history, man."
But the change of environment seemed to have healed some of Blaine's personal wounds, so that he was
thinking more clearly. "I don't mean to insult you, Sam, but I can get a top position in just about any
corporation in America. No matter how much fun I'm having, I'd be crazy to give that up to work with a
couple of kids trying to run a company out of a garage. And I'm definitely not crazy."
Sam continued to badger Blaine all the way to the airport. Susannah sat in the backseat and listened as
Sam asked Blaine the same question he had once asked her. "Are you in or out? I want to know."
Blaine gave Sam a good-natured slap on the back. "I'm out, Sam. I've told you that from the beginning.
Do you have any idea what I was getting paid before I resigned? I was making almost a million dollars a
year, plus stock options and more perks than you can imagine. You can't touch a package like that."
"Money's not everything, for chrissake. It's the challenge. Can't you see that? Besides, the money will
come. It's just a matter of time."
Blaine shrugged him off. "I'm thinking about moving back to the Midwest. Chicago, probably. But I want
to keep in touch. You helped me over a pretty bad time, and I won't forget it. I'll give you as much
advice as I can on an informal basis."
"Not good enough," Sam persisted. "I want one hundred percent. And if you don't give it to me, you're
going to regret it for the rest of your life."
But Mitchell Blaine didn't prove as easy to badger as Susannah had been. "No sale," he said.
Chapter 14
P r e v i o u s T o p
N e x t
Blaine was a fast reader with an almost photographic memory, and he devoured the printed word like
other people consumed junk food. But he had been looking at the same page in Business Week since he
had left San Francisco on the Boston-bound 747, and he didn't have the slightest idea what he had read.
He kept thinking about Sam and Yank and what they were doing in the garage. He couldn't remember
being so excited by anything in years. They were doomed to fail, of course. Still, he couldn't help but
admire them for making the attempt.
The flight attendant serving the first-class passengers was covertly studying him. She bent forward to
speak to a passenger in the row across from him and her straight skirt tightened across her hips. As a
married man, he had always been scrupulously faithful, but his days of being Mr. Straight Arrow were
over, and he imagined those hips beneath his own.
She turned toward him and asked him if he needed anything. The whiff of her perfume killed his arousal
as effectively as a cold shower. She was wearing an old-fashioned floral scent reminiscent of his aunts'
bathpowder.
He had smelled like that bathpowder himself for years not because he had used it, but because the
scent clung to everything in that rambling old house in Clearbrook, Ohio. He shut his eyes, remembering
the bathpowder and his aunts, and the oppressive, cloying softness of his upbringing.
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