Raj hit his head against the desk next to the keyboard and exhaled all the breath he had left in him. The cursor was flashing at him, taunting him, and he was powerless to stop it.
“What did you think of Laura’s swimsuit?” asked Beth, pacing into the room behind him, yoghurt in hand.
“Swimsuit? What?”
“Laura’s swimsuit. It looked good on her, didn’t it?”
Raj turned, blinked at Beth with his mouth agape.
“What?”
“The blue one—”
“I know what you mean, I’m just asking why—”
“So you noticed it.” It was an accusation, he could tell, but he was too stressed to care. He turned back to the screen, started reading the method over again, just in case it would make sense the fiftieth time.
“What’s your app do, anyway?” Beth asked, pulling a chair next to him. She pushed his hands away from the keyboard, arrowed down a few lines.
“Typo,” she said. “Declare your variables with better… oh seriously, camel caps?”
Raj had nothing to say. He was a web developer, but she was a real programmer. No matter what he tried, he’d be made to feel like a fool. So he bit his lip and watched her work.
“I don’t get it,” she continued. “Is this a home automation routine? What’s this part here, what’s this do?”
“Lets you switch cameras.”
“Spying?”
“Home automation. So you can make sure the lights shut off and stuff.”
She nodded, ate another spoonful of yoghurt, and kept the spoon in her mouth so she could start typing a bunch of new code. He couldn’t follow it, but it looked useful.
“Here… link this library, and you can patch into our robotics controls from work. I’ll need to get it approved, but we’ve been looking for third-party developers anyway. Now that’s a killer app.”
“Home automation with robots?”
“Security with robots. Imagine that: you’re a security chief, and you can check your whole building, control every facet, from your iPhone. And where the cameras don’t go, one of our Wheelies can.”
“I don’t know if the security market is really big enough—”
“Raj, darling, don’t be so naïve. The security market is massive and rich. If you’re going to do this, do it with brains.”
He nodded unhappily. This wasn’t his app anymore, but he couldn’t argue with her. It was her laptop anyway.
“Jesus,” Beth whistled, paging through code. “What the hell have you got in here? You didn’t write all this, did you?”
“A lot of stuff got imported when I started. Must be iPhone-specific code. I don’t know.”
“No wonder their batteries crap out so fast. This is insane…”
Raj nudged her with his shoulder, smiled. She glanced over at him, eyebrow raised.
“Thanks for helping,” he said gently. “You really are the best.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she went back to work.
“You didn’t notice my swimsuit, so how good can I be?”
Raj said nothing to this, and in fact nothing more till bedtime, when he left her to the app, alone, pouring her tension and anger into the screen.
