Chapter Eighteen: Birth Of The Babble

Babble Software opened for business in 1986. Its product was called Tower of Babble.

Tweed and I formed a partnership. I made the product and he marketed it. Since we were life long friends, we did not feel the need to have any written agreement as to our business relationship. This would eventually prove to be not a good thing. Just like all the business advisors advised.

Neither of us had taken anything remotely connected to business in college. It seemed like some foreign land where only very bland assholes lived who were too dumb to shop for anything but ugly ties.

Plus they didn’t let you smoke reefers in the office. This was number one on our desired employee benefits package. None of the business recruiters who came around in our senior year to swallow up lives with ten minute coffee breaks had a reefer package on their recruiting tables. Especially the military recruiters. They did not look like wholesome specimens of humanity. Scary dudes. Not reefer-friendly.

Which was why Tweed and I had become entrepreneurs. We couldn’t find real jobs. Out in the real world. We had to make them up as we stumbled along getting older by the day. It was an impressive sounding job description, though. Like you had a stepmother who had expatriated herself to live in France. It was the kind of job title that implied you had lots of money and were very smart. Maybe even shrewd. In reality, of course, we were just usually fairly broke and marginally employed.

The first mailing to the typesetting industry of America generated three sales. We had mailed out five hundred letters. Three checks in the mail. It was very encouraging. Not the volume, but the fact that there really were idiots out there, hereafter known as customers, who would send you money for a floppy disk on your word alone that the disk actually did what you said it would. Or even had anything on it but a disk label.

Amazing.

Now, when somebody asked what I did for a living, I could say I was an entrepreneur and mean it. I could barely pronounce it. But that was good, too. People were usually impressed with things that were hard to pronounce. It definitely made me taller than my former response of “nothing much.” Those in the know knew that “nothing much” was insider-speak for “reefer head.” Those not in the know just said, “I see.”

By 1990 Babble Software had an office and four employees. The typesetting business was closed. Margaret was now an employee of Babble. I signed her checks, instead of vice versa like in the beginning. She was one of the four employees. She answered the phone, directed the calls, and took orders. Another employee handled tech support calls and user support. The other two were programmers.

She no longer flirted with me. If her hair brushed my cheek, it was to deposit a layer of frost on her way out the door. The more success we enjoyed, the frostier she became. She elevated her sneering wizardry to new creative heights.

Art didn’t notice this development. Which was not surprising. As I mentioned earlier, his comprehension of nuance and body language could charitably be described by the phrase “Dense as hell.”

In fact, Art was newly energized by life and his role in it. This did not amuse Margaret, either. Art was a well respected man about town. It was “Hi, Art. How’s the computer guru today?” Everywhere he went. Up and down the streets. He was the face and brains of Babble Software. A Sebastopol icon.

I still worked at home, where it was quiet and private. And where Teresa was always nearby, her distinctive, feverish music emanating through the house from the baby grand piano in the living room.

I loved to tiptoe in and watch her. She did not play with rigid posture and stern focus. More like Jerry Lee Lewis plays Bach. Her hair flying wildly, shoulders and body swaying and punching the space around her in a fierce frenzy.

TellingWays and GoingBlind. We were made for each other.

“Thank God for Leonard and his kite,” I said to Teresa. “We owe our life to a kid and his kite.”

We were taking our daily walk in the countryside. Out in the rolling hills where the apple orchards really were alive with the crunch of apples. They were mesmerizing. Row after row after row. Stretching out in the distance in all directions. Thousands and thousands of apple makers, making in a row. Making up and down, making all around. Making in and out, making thin and stout. Making juicy apples for every juicy mouth.

“What are you giggling about?” she asked me.

“I’m feeling like making out. Give me a smooch.”

“We’re in the middle of the road.”

“Who cares.”

I grabbed her and we smooched in the middle of the road. A tractor came along and the driver waved his straw hat at us with a big smile on his face.

“What are you so happy about?” she asked. “You’re giddy as hell today. What did you do? Get a program to work or something?”

“No. Nothing. I don’t know. I love you, that’s all.”

“You’ve been in love with me for eight years now. What’s so special about today?”

“It was love at first sight, wasn’t it?”

“Fourth sight. The Deer Creek, Posh Nosh, my house, then the river.”

“I knew at the Deer Creek, though.”

We finished our walk. Up the winding road to the top of the hill and around the ridge line back to our house. It was about two miles. When we got there, we sat on the deck and watched the sun set.

We lived in a small house she had bought for us after selling her house in Nevada City. The house was a mile east of Sebastopol, half-way up the slope of a hill overlooking acres of apple orchards we had just walked through, with a spectacular view of the sunsets that emblazoned the horizon and slipped a gradual shadow across the valley below, pulling the bedspread up over another day.

“You should get out more,” she said to me, playing with her glass of wine on the table top, making it sing when she rubbed her fingers around the rim.

“But I am out,” I said, reaching for my beer can. “We were just out.”

“Not outside. Out out.”

“Ah. Out out. Out there out, you mean.”

“Right. You stay home too much.”

“I like it here. You’re here. There’s nothing out there. There hasn’t been anything out there since I found you.”

“You found me because you were out. You never are anymore.”

“I’m not looking for you anymore. That’s the only thing out there was good for. I had to stick myself around till we finally found each other.”

“I need stimulation. Adventure. People. Places.”

“Ah. You need to get out.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying. I’m bored. Let’s go out for dinner.”

“Again? We just did that last month.”

“Exactamundo. Only it was three months ago.”

She whirled out of her chair and headed for the bathroom mirror, not waiting for any reply from me. Teresa was not one to dawdle over the decision making process. Once it was made, forward she went.

I did not have to ask her where we were going. Scottie’s was on Main Street in the heart of the downtown area. All one mile of it. The only restaurant with tables outside where you could smoke cigarettes.

Fortunately, we both had the habit. Not that smoking was good, but that one who did and one who didn’t wasn’t.

We settled into our chairs and the waiter showed up.

“Something to drink?” he asked.

Teresa lowered her head and squinted at me through the bangs of her eyelashes, wiggling her eyebrows. She was feeling feisty and mischievous.

“I’ll have a Corona and a shot of Cuervos Gold,” she stated.

“Same for me,” I said.

When the waiter was gone, I asked, “What’s the occasion?”

“Nothing.”

“I see.”

“I’m not in a wine mood.”

“I see.”

“You could have ordered wine.”

“I’m a beer drinker.”

“See.”

That was settled. Somehow.

Our drinks arrived and we went through the exciting ritual. Salt on the back of the hand. Lick the salt, down the shot, bite the lime. Grimace and blink watery eyes. Say “Whew!” Drink the Corona.

This ritual was all invented in America, of course, to please Hollywood and make getting wasted look like good, healthy, exciting fun. In Mexico, they just drank the tequila. It was too hot down there to mess around with dressing up drinking.

She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke back over her shoulder. A couple walked by. The woman greeted Teresa as they passed by. She gave me a glancing look of puzzlement. Perhaps curiosity.

“See what I mean,” Teresa said.

“See what what means?” I asked.

“She didn’t know we were married. She didn’t know who you were.”

“Why would she? I don’t know her, either. Who is she?”

“Nobody.”

“That clears that up.”

I motioned the waiter to bring another shot.

“It’s you, idiot.”

“Me?”

“Nobody knows who you are.”

“Why should they?”

“You don’t get it. People know me. They know the Tweeds. Nobody knows you. It bugs me. You’re like wallpaper while people are looking out the window. Invisible. You don’t get out enough.”

“What’s wrong with that? I mean, who cares? If a bunch of people know me they’ll just start suggesting I change my name to Purple. It would look better on my decor or something. Besides, if they don’t know me, I don’t have to know them. Which is great. You don’t need as many chit, chat speeches.”

“You don’t get it.”

“Hey, it’s good for you, too.” I decided to needle her. “If they don’t know we’re married, you don’t have to be stuck with the impression you made a bad decision by marrying a bozo. You can always say I’m just your real estate agent.”

“Fuck you.”

The waiter renewed our shot glasses. We threw them down with gusto and slammed the glasses on the table and laughed our asses off.

“I love this stuff,” she said.

“Yep. It’s fun to drinko and makes you stinko.”

“Don’t start in with the horse crap rhymes.”

“You used to like them.”

“I was lying.”

Teresa ordered fish. I ordered spaghetti with meatballs. We had another shot before the food arrived.

While we were eating, Art walked by and stopped to shoot the shit. More like posing the shit. He loved walking around town stopping to shoot the shit with fellow citizens. Even if they were from out of town.
Pressing the flesh, he called it. His hands had turned into portable travel irons that took the creases out of idiots.

There was a sidewalk railing between him and us. He leaned over it resting on his arms. Every two minutes, somebody would walk by and clap him on the shoulder and say, “How’s it going, Art? How’s the view from the Tower?”

It was mildly annoying. I was glad when he left. So was Teresa.

“See what I mean,” she said.

“No. What?”

“Nobody even knows it’s your company.”

“It’s Art’s, too.”

“It’s yours, too. Nobody knows that.”

I leered at her. “You kinda like me, don’t you sweetie.”

“Screw you,” she laughed. “Where’s the waiter. I need another shot.”

We finished dinner and walked around town. Teresa didn’t want to go home yet. She wasn’t through being out.

Main street had some old fashioned type street lamp poles that were great to wrap an arm around and wave a bottle of liquor with the other arm while singing off key old songs and trying not to fall down.

Nobody did that much anymore, though. Friendly besotted fellows had gone out of fashion. You could only publicly besot yourself now if you were in an old Hollywood movie and owned a Model T Ford.

Friendly drunks were now called disgusting specimens. They were banned from street lamps unless they were on a leash. Otherwise, they had to sit behind dumpsters in an alley and make sure their bottle was in a paper bag.

“They don’t make the world like they used to,” I said to Teresa as we ambled along, dipping around in the reverie barrel.

“How could they? It’s new every morning. Nothing grows backward.”

“I wonder why. Maybe there’s another universe where it does and everyone complains that they always make the world the same as it was yesterday.”

“You had too much to drink. Did you ever notice how boring this town is? It looks nice and homey when you’re just visiting, but if you live here you notice there’s no overall design or planning to it. The town looks like it got here bit by bit by falling off trucks as they passed through to somewhere else.”

“I hadn’t noticed that.”

“Look at that block. Right on Main Street. A boutique next to an empty lot next to a gas station next to a laundromat next to the Post Office next to a pseudo-San Francisco apartment building. And all these quaint street lamps trying to look like Bourbon Street. Bizarre.”

“It’s the painter in you. You see too much.”

A woman walked by holding a baby. I had to tread around on my heels while Teresa stopped the mother, became life long friends, and goo-gahed over the tyker.

Women had secret bonding codes men couldn’t read. All male bonding codes could be seen from ten miles away since they were always loud, overacted, and gross.

Teresa always went bonkers over babies and children. I didn’t know if she was more or less this way than other women. They all did it. Even hardened criminals on death row. It was an exclusive club. You could be gay and have ten adopted kids and you still couldn’t qualify for membership.

Teresa was quiet when we finally continued our walk. I expected it. She couldn’t have her own babies. There were cancer genes in her family and she’d got some of them in her uterus when she was in her early twenties. Removing the cancer had removed having babies. It was pretty depressing to think about.

“Let’s go home, Blue.”

“Sure.”

To be continued . . .