A Rational Woman at Sea in a Fog

"The bad news is that you're going to prison."

"What's the good news?"

"There isn't any."

Suzanne watched Martin's eyes turn sad. They were saddest eyes that she had ever seen in a client. And she'd seen a lot of sad eyes in the last ten years. It was right there in the defense attorney job description: look into defendants' eyes, tell the truth, and watch them grow sad. She thought that she'd become inured to clients' sadness but Martin was affecting her more deeply than most. Not because he was a young man, many of her clients were young men, nor because he had money, she accepted almost no pro bono clients, but because he looked so vulnerable. Most of her young clients were the spoiled children of wealthy parents. Martin had neither their innate self-assurance nor their unquestioned belief that they were entitled to have whatever they wished.

"How long?" he asked, quietly.

"That's not good news either. The SEC wants to send a message. Their offer is twenty years." She saw the blood drain from Martin's face. "I'm trying to negotiate them down to ten. They aren't budging yet, but I've got a few more cards to play." She always tried to throw her clients some bone as she ushered them out of her office but she wasn't shading the truth this time; she expected that she could move the prosecutor at least a little on the sentence recommendation.

"What if I go to trial?"

"Then you could get thousands of years of prison time. They're charging you with hundreds of separate counts of insider trading and they'll argue for separate sentences to be served consecutively."

"If I get ten years, I'll be old when I get out."

Suzanne shook her head. "You'll be thirty-three. That's not old." She refrained from pointing out that, when he was released, he would be five years younger than she was now. If she and the prosecutor split the difference between their current positions and he got fifteen years, then he would be exactly her age when he was released.

"Ten years is almost half my life."

"You'll have to give back the money, too."

"How much?"

"All of it."

"I don't have all my money. I've spent quite a bit of it. Besides, I didn't make all of it by trading stocks. I got some from other parts of my business. The SEC shouldn't have any claim on that part."

"They figure you owe them fifty million."

"I only have thirty-four and change. It hurt when you advised me to liquidate so quickly. Selling off large blocks at once depressed the price of some of the companies that I'd invested in."

"You have a couple of houses. Your cars. Your yacht. That adds up to a few million. You bought tangible assets. You didn't spend all your money on wine, women, and song."

"I didn't spend any money on wine, women, and song. I've only had a couple of girlfriends in my life and none of them stayed around for long. If you don't have a woman, then there's no reason to waste money on wine and song."

"No?" She was surprised. "You're a good looking guy. And you've got a lot of money. I'd have thought that the girls'd be standing in line for a date with you."

He shrugged. "I was pretty busy. When I started out, I was writing code all the time. After that, I was babysitting the servers. Then, for the last couple of years, I was monitoring the online discussions to know which stocks to buy and sell. That was a lot of work. It took all my time. The last few weeks have been the first time since high school that I've been able to spend more than a couple of hours at a time doing anything besides working and sleeping. Girls don't want to hang around a guy who's hunched over a computer all the time."

Suzanne knew what he was saying. Since passing the bar more than ten years ago, she had been working seventy-hour weeks, week after week, year in and year out. Every year, she told herself that her next promotion would make things easier but it never did. The firm was too big and there was too much internecine rivalry at every level.

It was hard to have a love life in a rat race, even for a woman as attractive as her.

She had not had a steady boyfriend in a long time.

The money was great but, for the last couple of years, she had been asking herself if the cost was too high. Was any amount of money enough to compensate her for her youth?

It was a rational question. The answer was that far more hotshot lawyers burned out and dropped out than made equity partner. She was one of the three lawyers in her entry year cohort who was still with the firm. Sometimes, she thought about those other dozen eager young faces that sat around the conference table during the corporate orientation meeting so long ago and wondered what most of them were doing now. She hoped that they were happy.

"You should enjoy yourself as much as you can during the next few days," she said. "Once we reach an agreement on your plea, we'll schedule a court date for you to allocute before a judge as soon as possible. You'll start serving your sentence right after that."

"Allocute means that I confess?"

"Right."

"But I still don't think that I did anything wrong. I didn't hurt anyone."

"SEC regulations protect stockholders by keeping the playing field level. You tilted it in your favor when you used the information that was stored on your servers to buy stocks and sell stocks at advantageous times. You were effectively taking money from other stockholders who didn't have the same information."

"I spread my trades out over as many companies as possible. I didn't trade many stocks in any one company at any one time. The other stockholders would barely notice the difference."

"You took fifty million dollars away from them."

"But that was from a lot of trades. I didn't take not more than a little from any one stock. Besides, the information that I was using was sitting on a web site. The corporate executives and boards of directors who were using my meeting software should have known not to discuss sensitive information on the web. Everyone knows that what goes on the web can get hacked. It happens all the time."

She shook her head. "You said explicitly that your software was secure."

"They had to know that nothing was secure from me. The system administrator can always see everything that anyone puts on his server. They were essentially giving me the information. How can anyone blame me for looking at stuff that was right there in front of me?"

"Look, Martin. You can't say all this when you allocute to the judge. You have to say what you did and admit that you knew that it was wrong. If you try to justify it like this, he can throw out your plea deal and give you a longer sentence. You don't want to go to prison for the rest of your life. Just say that you created software for online meetings, made that software available to the management boards of major corporations for free, read the discussions about corporate plans, and then used that information to gain advantage in stock transactions. Don't say that you didn't know that it was a crime or that it was all someone else's fault. Just admit that you did something wrong."

He looked at her and slowly nodded his head. "I understand. I'll say whatever you tell me to say. It doesn't matter. I'm going to prison next week and I'm not going to have a girlfriend until I'm old."

"Do something fun this weekend. Do something that you'll enjoy. What do you want to do most of all?"

He looked sadder than before. "All I really want is to go out on a date and I can't. I don't know any girls. You're the only woman that I've talked with in a long time."

"Then ask me out." Suzanne would never know why she blurted that out. She was fifteen years older than Martin. Worse, he was her client. Any romantic involvement was a blatant conflict of interest. She could be disbarred.

She never did anything on impulse, much less did anything as irrational as this. But she needed to have a little fun as badly as Martin did. Her love life was as bereft as his. She was lonely and on the verge of burning out. And she liked him. He was intelligent and vulnerable and sweet in his own way.

There might have been a little guilt motivating her as well. When she had first taken his case, she had expected that he'd get nothing more than a slap on the wrist. It was just a little white-collar crime and the courts were clogged with real criminals and real victims. She'd told him that he'd probably have to return the money, get a suspended sentence, and do a little community service. She never expected that the SEC would want to throw him in jail for the rest of his life. He was only twenty-three and barely knew what the SEC was. And the prosecutor didn't have a single victim to bring to court.

But there had been a bit of publicity at the outset because of the amount of money involved and publicity was always bad for a guilty client. It didn't help that so many authorities were afraid of the power of the Internet and were determined to slam anyone who seemed to benefit from the technology.

So, despite her best efforts, Martin was a condemned man facing a substantial prison sentence.

Martin looked at her in shock. "But you're out of my league," he said. "Look at you. You're beautiful. You wouldn't want to go out with me."

"You won't know unless you ask me."

She knew that he would ask. There wasn't the slightest doubt in the world about that. It didn't matter that they were different generations or came from different worlds. He needed a woman and she was making herself available.

They both knew what she was saying. If he treated her reasonably, he would probably get lucky tonight. Not for certain -- nothing was ever a hundred percent certain -- but the odds were strongly stacked in his favor. She wanted it. She hadn't been laid in a long time and she liked him.

There was a long pause while he mastered his shock and gathered his courage. Finally, he spoke. "Do you want to go out tonight?" His voice was shaking so much that he was almost stuttering. He was staring at her like she was the last woman on earth.

"Yes," she said.

"You do? Really? You'll go on a date with me?"

"I'd like that."

"Really?" His eyes were wide. "Where do you want to go?"

"That's up to you," she said. "What do you want to do tonight?"

"I don't know. I'm not good at dating."

"What do you like to eat?"

"Mexican food."

"Then take me out for Mexican food."

"Okay. What time?"

"Is five-thirty good for you?" she asked. "We can beat the supper rush if we go a little early." She deserved to get out of the office on time for once in her life. Besides, this was almost a business appointment. She was scheduled to meet with the ADA at two o'clock to discuss the terms of the plea bargain. She hoped to have good news for Martin this evening. If you could call a ten-year prison sentence good news. At least it would be better news than a twenty-year sentence.

"I don't have anything else planned," he said. "Do you know where Verdugo's is?"

"I can find it."

With that, the decision was final. They were going on a date.

* * *

"That was good," Suzanne said. Though the restaurant was only a few blocks from her office, she had never eaten here before because it was a small place hidden away on a small side street. "How did you find this place?"

"A couple of years ago, I decided to try eating at every Mexican restaurant in the city. I liked this place the most," Martin replied.

As was her habit in Mexican restaurants, Suzanne had ordered one of the house specialties rather than a standard combinacione gringo. The chili-stuffed chicken breast drizzled with mole sauce had been accompanied by a side salad with a honey and lime dressing. Both had been wonderful. But when she said that the meal was good, she was referring to the company more than the food.

Martin's self-deprecating anecdotes about his early days when he was creating his startup company had been both amusing and poignant.

He was definitely going to get lucky tonight.

So was she.

"What would you like to do now?" he asked.

"I'd like to watch the sun set over the ocean," she replied. "I understand that your beach house has a terrific view."

"That's more than an hour's drive from here."

"The sun won't set until nine."

He stared at her for a long time, trying to read her mind.

She smiled. She was pretty sure that her intention was obvious. She was going to seduce him.

"Okay," he said, then pulled a phone out of his pocket and began texting.

That was rude. She began to wonder if he was going to get lucky after all.

But he looked up and said, "My car will be here in about ten minutes. I usually use the Tesla for tooling around town, but I'd rather take the Virage for a longer drive."

Suzanne understood. He had not been messaging someone that he found more interesting than her; he had been texting a valet service to get his car delivered.

She was relieved. She really wanted to get lucky tonight.

While they were waiting, she said, "You haven't told me how you got the idea for your conferencing software in the first place. You were still in high school when you started designing it, right? What on earth could put that ahead of chasing cheerleaders on your priority list?"

"It was high school. I had about as much chance going out with a cheerleader as meeting a barbarian warrior princess. Less. I could always hope that I'd fall through a microscopic black hole and pop into an alternate universe that was overflowing with barbarian women. But, even in a bizarre alternate universe, I couldn't hope that a cheerleader would want me."

He grinned. His grin was charming.

"I wasn't exactly the captain of the football team. But, like every other teenage boy in the universe, I had daddy issues. In my case, my daddy had issues with business meetings. He was a middle manager in the Northwest Regional Office of the Department of Transportation. He went to meetings every day and every evening he came home and complained about them. I figured that things would be happier around the house if he didn't have such awful meetings. I listened to his complaints and started writing code."

"A lot of important people use your service. How could a high school student design something like that?"

Martin shrugged. "I believed what my father told me. He always said that the smartest people on his staff turned stupid as soon as they stepped into a meeting room. When he raised any subject in a meeting, everyone would make up their minds instantly, for or against, before they'd heard any discussion. Once their minds were made up, they could never change them again. I found other sites that hosted web-based meetings and told him about them. He looked at them but he wouldn't use them because they didn't solve the human problem. I figured that I had to write a program for him that was different. It had to make smart people stay smart by never giving them a chance to make up their minds about anything until they've had a chance to reason through all the discussion."

The restaurant door opened and he looked around. "Great. My car's here. You don't have to listen to any more boring lecture about my daddy issues."

As Suzanne followed him out of the room, she thought about his line, The smartest people turn stupid as soon as they step into a meeting room. That rang true. When she was younger, she had spent a lot of time in meetings and had seen many smart people turn stupid.

This afternoon had been no different. The prosecutor's mind was already made up. Martin's plea bargain had to include a twenty-year prison sentence. Her attempt to reason with him had fallen on deaf ears. She had no hope that she'd be able to get him to reduce the sentence even to fifteen years. She was going to have to tell Martin soon. But not tonight. Tonight she wanted him to be as happy as he could be. He deserved that much.

"I like the pearly color," she said as she stepped out of the restaurant.

"It's called silver blonde," he said. "My Ferrari's red. I think an Aston Martin should look more elegant."

"This is an Aston Martin?"

"Virage. Twelve cylinder coupe. It's got forty eight--" He interrupted himself and laughed. "You don't want to hear all engineering specs, do you?"

"I want to ride up to your beach house," she said, wrapping her hands around his upper arm and brushing her head against his shoulder. She was not short but he was taller than her. She liked that, too.

"Right," he said. "We want to get there before sunset. Don't worry. The Virage can do it. It's got forty-eight valves." He laughed at himself for not being able to resist throwing in a little technical trivia. "That's a lot of valves." He opened the passenger door for her.

She settled into the tan leather seat. "Ooh. This is nice. Comfortable."

He smiled. "We may as well enjoy it while we can. I won't have it much longer."

She had no answer for that.

Despite his love for the big engine, he drove up the coast at a comfortable speed. When he came up behind slower cars, he never rode the other driver's bumper, but purred behind at a careful distance. Patience is a trait that she appreciated in drivers.

The common stereotype was that technical geeks were seldom so considerate of other people. She was happy to abandon that prejudice.

After they crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, she said, "You're dating the cheerleader tonight, you know."

"Really?"

"Really. I was on the cheer squad for two years in high school."

"I never would have guessed that." He glanced across at her. "I mean, you're certainly beautiful enough. But you're a lawyer. At a major law firm. A high achiever."

It was her turn to laugh. "Not all cheerleaders are bimbos, you know."

He flushed red and kept his eyes on the road.

She reached across the console and stroked his head. "Tonight, I'm not your lawyer. Tonight, I'm the cheerleader that you're dating. When I was in high school, I always hoped that one of the smart guys would ask me out but they never did. And the captain of the football team was a bimbo. Going out with you is as much my fantasy as it is yours."

She was telling lies. The captain of the varsity football team at her high school was an honor student with a three point eight GPA. And she could have dated almost any honor student that she wanted. But tonight the truth was not important. Being Martin's fantasy was. And his fantasy was finding a desirable woman who secretly dreamed of dating a man like him.

Every man harbored some version of a dating-an-un-datable-woman fantasy.

Her fantasy was that she was still young. Being his cheerleader helped her to pretend that she wasn't Martin's senior by fifteen years.

As long as he didn't expect her to turn any cartwheels, this would be a win-win deal.

He smiled and leaned his head against her hand for a minute.

Unlike plea-bargaining, love can be a positive sum game.

* * *

"Inside or outside?"

Martin's house had what is known in real estate parlance as a "whitewater ocean view", meaning that it was positioned on a bluff that overlooked a rugged section of coastline. There was no hope of swimming in the surf that crashed and roared around the boulders at the base of the cliff, but that was fine with Suzanne. She would rather watch the dramatic, primal spectacle than paddle around a sandy beach.

There were benches on the lawn between the house and the precipice, positioned to make the most of the spectacular view.

"Outside," she said. "We can go inside when it gets cool later."

"Make yourself at home," he said. "I'll be back in a moment."

She settled on a bench while he busied himself inside the house.

The setting sun backlit the breaking swells with rich, red fire. The water crashed so violently against the rock that the fine spray looked like smoke.