If You Can Get It Read online

  “Of course a lot of people will still be happy with the iPhone app, but the dedicated device has a better sound chip, a 6.3-millimeter audio jack, and other features that hard-core fans will care about. It focus-grouped really well. And it lets us do an end-run around Apple, which insists on treating us like any other app developer and won’t give us some of the access we want.”

  “Oh. Well, I guess you guys must know what you’re doing.”

  Jen arrived early at the AppLogix campus the next morning, as was her wont. This promptness earned her BMW coupe a parking spot that would be shaded by the nearest building by the time she came out in the evening, and it gave her time to prepare before her weekly project call with members of the PocketDJ Player team from all over the world. Designed more with the intention of being a “walking campus” than for convenience, AppLogix consisted of eight small, single-story buildings, each named after one of the world’s tallest mountains. Jen was in Kangchenjunga, a name so uniquely intimidating in its spelling that its residents habitually referred to it as “Kanga” instead and had procured for the lobby a huge stuffed representation of the Winnie-the-Pooh character of the same name, at whose feet wags would leave assorted votive offerings.

  At eight o’clock, having fortified herself with coffee and updated spreadsheets, Jen dialed into the conference call and began cataloguing her team’s achievements and failures. The Singapore design center retained certain doubts as they tested specimens of the finished product. Shanghai assured her that the shipments for Amazon and Best Buy would arrive in the United States on time yet became evasive when asked when they would ship and how long the shipment would take. The documentation team bombarded her with questions as they prepared the training materials that would allow telephone service representatives to confuse themselves and others in response to customer queries. These and dozens of other details were gathered, debated, scheduled, assigned as action items, and crossed off lists. As she lapped the first hour, Jen was in her element and was mildly gratified that there was less to fault than she had expected. The launch of the PocketDJ Player was exactly the sort of project to showcase her mastery of detail. Take that hand from the tiller, and any number of needs would be forgotten, deadlines missed. And if all went well, it would be the faultlessness of this launch that would bring her the promotion to director, acknowledging the level at which she had already been performing for the last six months.

  In the midst of this well-managed whirlwind, her cell phone buzzed to proclaim the arrival of a text.

  Katie: “do you have spare hdmi cable?”

  Jen shoved the phone angrily away, but the knowledge of the unanswered question disrupted her concentration until, while the lead of the programming team in Slovakia explained an obstacle to meeting the delivery date for the second-generation Player software, she seized the phone and replied: “Bottom left computer desk drawer in my room. What are you doing?”

  “setting up xbox”

  “I’m at work! BUSY!”

  “ok chill”

  The Xbox proved to be the nexus of conflict over the following days. When Jen arrived home at eight o’clock that night, with the sense of glowing self-worth that being absolutely needed in the office for twelve hours at a time provided, she found Katie crouched on the floor in front of the TV, controller in hand, a half-empty “family-size” bag of Doritos and several crumpled Coke cans spread out around her on the cream-colored carpet.

  “Have you seriously spent the whole day playing a video game on the Xbox?” Jen demanded. “Did you even get dinner?”

  Katie made a dodging motion and pressed frantically on the controller. Jen scooped up the bag of Doritos, dropped into one of the armchairs, and consumed several chips.

  “I went to the store and got stuff,” Katie said, indicating the Doritos. “I wasn’t really that hungry, and I didn’t know if you would pick up dinner.”

  Jen popped another chip into her mouth, licked the livid orange dust off her fingers, and disappeared into the kitchen. The fridge door sounded.

  “Two fridge packs of Coke and no Diet?”

  “Diet is disgusting. If you’re going to drink soda, drink it for real.”

  A popping sound confirmed that Jen had followed this admonition.

  “Oh man, you got Nutella?”

  Katie was immersed in her game and did not respond. After a few moments Jen entered, bearing a can of Coke and a Nutella sandwich. “I haven’t had Nutella in ages.”

  “It’s right there in the store.”

  “I don’t buy it. All this stuff is horrendous, Katie. It’s going to make me fat.”

  Katie shrugged. “So don’t eat it. But you’re not fat.”

  “That’s because I don’t stock the house with carb cocaine. If this junk is here, I’ll eat it.”

  “Some willpower you’ve got there.”

  The theme played out with variations the following days.

  “What the hell is with you sitting around all day playing some video game?” Jen demanded Wednesday night, dumping her laptop bag on the couch, kicking off her shoes, and tucking her feet under her.

  “It’s not ‘some video game’; it’s Skyrim. This is epic stuff.”

  “Still on your Doritos and Coke diet?”

  “I found some money of yours and ordered in. There’s a container for you in the fridge. I got you something vegetarian because I saw you’d eaten two of my Pop-Tarts this morning, and I figured you’d still be feeling guilty.”

  Jen pulled herself out of the chair and padded into the kitchen. “Yes, I ate your Pop-Tarts for breakfast. Why didn’t I just invite a drug pusher to move in with me?”

  “Oh, come on,” Katie called after her. “It’s just Doritos and stuff; it’s not like I’m snorting coke or something. Loosen up!”

  “At least cocaine shouldn’t show on my carpet like the Doritos crumbs.”

  Thursday night, Jen came up the stairs from the garage, then stood rooted just inside the kitchen door, staring at the table. Her hand mirror lay in the center of the table with two little lines of white powder on it. A razor blade and a short length of soda straw lay handy nearby.

  “Katie!”

  “Mmm? What?” a muffled voice called from the living room.

  Jen picked up the mirror with a hand that she suddenly realized was trembling and strode purposefully into the living room. “What is this, Katie?”

  “I ran out of Doritos,” Katie said without turning around. “And since you were so upset about all the junk food . . . As habits go, I’ve heard it’s slimming. Models do it.”

  “Katie! Put that damn controller down and look at me! Where did you get this?”

  Katie turned around with an impish smile. “From your cupboard. It’s baking powder.”

  Jen stood motionless and openmouthed.

  “The look on your face!” Katie chortled uncontrollably, kicking her feet against the floor. “Doritos! The gateway drug!”

  Jen stalked icily back to the kitchen and dusted the baking powder off into the trash. Reentering the living room, she planted herself between Katie and the TV. “All right. Very funny. You know what? It’s been a week. You need to decide whether you’re going to move in here or drag your sorry ass back to Mom and Dad’s house. If you want to live with me, I’m going to tell you just once: Get . . . a . . . job.”

  It was on Friday that the Shanghai team finally admitted that the Players had not shipped on time. They were aboard ship now, Jen was assured, but they would not arrive in the United States until two weeks after the planned launch date. Frustrations ran high, and when appealing to authority, Jen found her boss, Josh, the vice president of product marketing, curiously impassive.

  “Do we need to push back the launch date a couple weeks?” he asked.

  “No. I’ll get units here,” she assured him. “We’ll have to air them in. It just adds three dollars a unit to the cost. With all the advertising lined up, it would cost a lot more to delay than to fly supply in.
”

  “All right. Sounds like you’re dealing with it.”

  Back in her office, she opened her mind briefly to fear. Had the Player become a “troubled project”? Was the all-important entrance into hardware, with the unaccustomed difficulties that it entailed, being overshadowed by whatever the app launch of the week might be? For a moment, she envisioned herself in the same office, with the same title, three or four years hence—the oft-seen but never regarded manager of a product line that no one cared about, her hopes that this would prove the avenue to promotion replaced with the dull resignation that this was all she was fit for. End of the line.

  She quickly shook off these feelings of self-pity. This was simply an example of why it was essential to have someone like her in charge of the launch. Josh and the rest of the leadership team trusted her to surmount obstacles and get the product out in a creditable fashion.

  Working late at the office can serve two purposes: to get more work done than can be accomplished in the traditional eight or nine hours of the workday, or to emphasize to others, and perhaps most of all to oneself, that one is an important person weighed down with essential duties.

  At 6:00 P.M. on Friday, Jen was forced to admit that she was engaging in the latter. For the last fifteen minutes, she had been staring at her big presentation, the product launch deck, without seeing it. In two weeks, just five days before the PocketDJ Player arrived in stores, she would get up and deliver this to the entire executive team: why the product was essential; how she had brought it to market; the sales strategy; and how she had overcome all obstacles to assure a smooth launch. This was the career maker.

  All she had done since opening the deck, however, was consider the placement of a comma and adjust the font size on a few text boxes.

  She snapped her computer shut and headed out.

  In the lobby, Kanga cradled a plastic light saber in her paws: a sentinel standing guard until the new week brought the building’s inmates back to work and plot and plan and play foosball.

  Walking back to the car, she pulled out her phone.

  “Hey, Katie. How was your day?”

  “You’d be pleased. I went out and filled out a bunch of applications this morning. Starbucks called and asked if I’d come in for an interview Monday.”

  Jen held back the inquiry: Starbucks? Could you get any more stereotypical? At least she had applied somewhere.

  “It’s been a long week, Katie. Want to get some clothes on and we’ll go out to dinner?”

  “Yeah, I’d like that.”

  “I’ll be home in twenty minutes.”

  2

  The last time the Nilsson sisters had lived under the same roof for any extended time had been thirteen years before, when Katie was ten years old and Jen, lacking an internship, came home for the summer after her sophomore year of college.

  Compared to living with a roommate or a boyfriend, the current situation was unsettling. It seemed clear that she and her sister ought to have some sort of relationship, but the passing days make it clear that they did not share similar habits, preferences, or aspirations. Rather than a younger version of herself, with slight variations to add interest, Jen found herself living with someone who looked very much like her younger self, right down to her painfully familiar college cafeteria pudge, but who was in every other respect a stranger.

  Roommates and boyfriends were chosen, however poorly. That she should find herself in a close, inseverable relationship with someone not chosen seemed simultaneously unfair and intriguing. Was this how Uma at work had felt when she flew back to India last year to marry a man from her village of whom she had known only that he had fit the two criteria she had given her mother: he must have a college degree and he must not smoke? The idea of moving in with, much less marrying, someone about whom one knew so little and expecting happiness had seemed, to Jen, utterly mad. And yet what, really, did she know of Katie, other than that they shared genetic code?

  Jen was not sure whether to conclude that Starbucks was hard up for workers, or that a Midwestern religious studies major was exactly what they had been searching for, but Katie’s Monday morning interview had ended with the question “When can you start?” This had not decreased the likelihood of Jen’s returning home to find Katie recumbent on the couch, because answering the application question “When are you available?” with “Any time” had landed Katie with the opening shift on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.

  “Five A.M.!” Katie wailed from the couch on Friday evening. “This is worse than eight A.M. classes. I’ll never get to sleep in again.”

  “Welcome to adulthood,” Jen responded without sympathy. “They’ve only scheduled you for twenty-eight hours a week. Do you know how many hours I worked last week?”

  “But you make lots of money. I make ten bucks an hour.”

  “That is an excellent reason to find your way out of the service sector.”

  As the launch meeting loomed, it came to take up an ever larger share of Jen’s mind. The weekend before, she spent half of each day in the office, the other half at the kitchen table with her laptop, endlessly fiddling, rearranging, and considering.

  In the shower, she recited, “Our market study has suggested a domestic first-year market for this product of over three million units and a significant secondary revenue stream through monetizing the online user community experience.” At night, she awoke with a start from a dream in which she recited those words to the leadership team while still dripping and wrapped in a towel.

  On Wednesday night, she called Katie into her room to inspect the potential outfits she had laid out on the bed for the presentation.

  “Your presentation isn’t till Friday,” objected Katie.

  “That,” explained Jen, “is why I’m making this decision tonight. Tomorrow night I’m going to be all prepared and go to bed early so I’ll be fresh. You’re an objective set of eyes: Dress, skirt, or pants? What do you think?”

  “I think it’s pathetic that the only choices I have for my evening are planning your business wardrobe or watching The Expendables on FX. What’s a girl have to do to get a date around here?”

  “Write your phone number on some guy’s latte.”

  “I did, but he never called me!”

  “Wait, you wrote your phone number on a guy’s latte? Really?”

  “No. Sheesh, where’s the sense of humor?”

  Jen had a momentary flash of annoyance with herself; after three weeks, she should at least be able to tell when her sister was scamming. But Katie had disappeared into the closet, and Jen returned to contemplating her clothing options. The skirt and blouse were her favorite, but the COO was a leg watcher, and although she didn’t mind holding his attention, she wanted him to hear what she was saying as well. The dress was slightly longer and would perhaps look less out of place on a Friday, which would see even most of the executives in jeans. The dress and her good-luck pumps.

  Katie emerged from the closet. “How about if you wear these shoes?” she asked, holding up a pair of five-inch platform heels that Jen recalled, with sudden irritation toward her younger self, wearing to a Halloween party with Kevin.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’d never wear something like that in the office.”

  “What do you have them for?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been years since I’ve worn those.”

  “Can I borrow them?”

  “Sure, sure. You can have them. I don’t want them.”

  On Thursday, Jen’s diligence caught up with her. Everything was ready for the launch, so there was nothing left to do but worry. She stalked the halls and dropped by other people’s cubes, but there was no update to be had on her project and no room in her mind for anything else.

  She considered going home early, but she pictured Katie sprawled on the couch, eating snacks, and felt no desire to expose her raw nerves to her sister’s jibes. Instead, she called the hair salon and wheedled a last-minute appointment. Next d
oor to the salon was an auto detailing place, and impulsively she pulled in and ordered the BMW a full round of pampering while she went for her own. Freshly highlighted, trimmed, and blown out, looking at her reflection in the glistening black hood of the car, she told herself that she looked like a director already—a director who launched products effortlessly.

  Coming up the back stairs into the kitchen, she found the condo in a state of tumult. Katie had been cooking. Onion skins, bell pepper ends, and food wrappers were scattered across the counter, and the scents of pizza and microwaved popcorn filled the air.

  “What is all this?” Jen asked, setting her laptop bag in a corner and kicking off her shoes.

  “Watch out for the tomato sauce on the floor,” Katie cautioned, a moment too late. “Sorry! Here’s a paper towel.”

  Some sort of occasion was clearly in the offing. Katie had exchanged her usual flannel pants and flip-flops for a skirt and ballet flats.

  Jen gritted her teeth as she scrubbed at her foot with the paper towel, then put her shoes back on to forestall further accidents, reflecting bitterly that she couldn’t even count on the floor of her own condo to stay clean anymore.

  Katie pulled a package of popcorn out of the microwave and shook it into a bowl. “I thought you’d need to unwind before your big presentation,” she said, “so I made pizza and popcorn and checked out the original Die Hard. And I got wine coolers. Girls’ night in. Just what you need.”

  “Gosh, Katie,” Jen said, surveying the kitchen. “My stomach’s already tied in knots thinking about tomorrow. If I start gorging on all those carbs, I’m going to be sick. I was just going to have something light and get to bed early so I’ll be rested.”

  Katie was pulling the pizza out of oven. “Oh, come on!” She clattered the pizza pan onto the stove and kicked the oven door closed. “If you can’t drop the uptight-business-chick act for a night, you’re never going to be relaxed for your meeting tomorrow. What you need is pizza and popcorn and movie violence. I even bought cookies ’n’ cream ice cream. That used to be your favorite, didn’t it?”