Page 22 of The Hard Launch

LACEY

On Monday morning, Trevor smells like every dude on every flight home from Las Vegas. I switch on the little fan that sits between my plant and my pen caddy. I suppose I should give him credit for showing up at all, though he’s not doing much typing or talking or anything but staring in the general direction of his monitor.

When Glenn arrives, Trevor’s the one who makes a big deal about it. He’s also the one who calls me out for my confused look.

“Bro, he hasn’t been here since Monday last week. They put his wife on bedrest or some shit.”

I look to Glenn for confirmation and he nods. I’ve been in such a hyper-focused bubble that I didn’t even notice my boss hasn’t been here.

“God. I’m so sorry, I totally missed that. Are Jen and the baby okay?”

He sets his bag down and nods. “Jen’s blood pressure’s a little high, but we’re watching it. It should be fine. Her sister’s there with her and the twins today.”

I consider telling him that he’s missed a button on his shirt, but it’s inconsequential and he seems weary.

“You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do to help?” I say instead.

“Keep doing what you’re doing, Lacey. The reason I can be at home so much is because I have you and Trevor here.”

“Okay,” I tell him. I try not to look askance at Trevor; Glenn knows who does the heaving lifting in this department.

“I’m so glad it worked out and I can be here today,” he say me. “I really wanted to be at this All Hands in person. Everything ready?”

I cross the fingers on both hands and bite my lip. It’s close enough to call it ready. We worked through the weekend, and were able to stand up a development server where we merged some of my team’s code with Jude’s. It’s not what you’d call production-ready or pretty, but at today’s All Hands we’re planning to show the process where a video is uploaded, that can then be played online, and will be intercut dynamically with ads from our own network.

I say we’re planning to show it, because in a software demo the rule is that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, along with some things you thought couldn’t ever go wrong.

Last night, at ten o’clock, we were successful on seven out of ten tries. But Dave couldn’t stop yawning, Ingrid kept zoning out, and the QA team was split down the middle in terms of, it’s a server issue/it’s a code issue. This somehow became a thing each camp thought they could resolve through volume.

“I’m calling it,” Jude finally said. “Everybody go home. Feed your fish or whatever, and get some sleep. It’s an alpha, it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t go off perfectly.”

“Are you sure?” Ingrid asked. “We’re so close. Two more tries?”

She looked at me.

“I’m with Jude,” I told her. “You guys have done so much, but I think this is what the point of diminishing returns feels like. We’ll fix it, but not tonight.”

Everyone packed up to go home, but when they stopped at my desk I told them I needed to wrap up one small thing before leaving. When they walked to the elevator, I backtracked to the conference room, where Jude was setting up another test.

“Hypocrite,” I said, sitting down next to him so I could see the error messages when they came up.

“I don’t have a fish,” he said.

It took two more hours, but we figured it out.

When we left together, he waited with me for my Uber to come.

“I sort of thought that was decorative,” I said, pointing at the motorcycle helmet in his hand.

He laughed. “It probably should be. I’d offer you a ride home, but I’m pretty sure I’d accidentally kill you on the way.”

“It can’t be that bad,” I assured him.

“It’s not good,” he said.

“Maybe get a scooter,” I told him. “We won’t have an ad network if you die.”

When my driver (Carl, in a KIA Sportage) arrived to pick me up, Jude opened the door for me and thanked me for staying so late.