Page 32 of Of Literature and Lattes
“What are you selling?”
They locked eyes on each other. It wasn’t a standoff. It was a question, and it was deeper than what was actually said. If he read her right, she was asking for his trust. And when she didn’t glance away or talk into the moment, he took the leap. “Less than a hundred, and I only have three months of float max.”
“Because that was all the bank required.”
“You got it.”
Alyssa sat back. “I may not be able to tell you anything you don’t already know, especially with such little data, but I’ll tell you what I’m doing for Lexi. She’ll ask us both anyway.”
He chuckled. “True.”
Alyssa explained what Lexi wanted and what it meant for Mirabella. Jeremy hung on every word and wished he were in the same position and could capitalize on her help. He suspected she could find the answers to every concern he’d expressed to Liam, every concern Ryan had leveled at him.
“You do this for a living?”
“Not exactly.” She wavered. “I did something like it for Capital One a few years ago, but I’ve spent the last three out in California working for... Vita XGC.”
The way she said the name, Jeremy knew it was important, but it took a minute to remember just how important. “The predictive medical company? The one that—” He stopped as her face paled. “That’s rough. It was big news in Seattle last Christmas. A lot of Amazon and Microsoft higher-ups lost fortunes over that thing. And to get told you’ll get Alzheimer’s or MS or something horrible, true or not, is pretty rough.”
“That’s an understatement. And now to find out it was all lies. I can’t imagine living like that, wondering if what we told them was true or not.”
“Haven’t they cleaned it all up? Told folks they aren’t dying?”
“Not that I know of.” She shrugged. “There’s like a black box around the whole thing. Anything the news gets is just gossip. Besides, I have no idea how they’ll even determine who received genuine information and who didn’t.”
“Some people got real information? It wasn’t all a hoax?”
Alyssa shook her head. “No. It worked. I created those algorithms, and some of it was true. But, in all our testing, we got too few hits to make it profitable. Then it all went wrong somewhere, and I have no idea where.”
“After Theranos, it’s surprising it got as far as it did.” Jeremy stretched his back.
“I suspect people weren’t looking for it. I sure wasn’t. It felt like everyone had learned a lesson, and we had no new technology. We didn’t take blood; we didn’t offer tests. We simply had a new way to synthesize data provided from established labs. It was the perfect foil really, and I fell for it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Please, don’t.” Alyssa shook her head again. “That’s my mess to unwind another day. Let’s talk about you and your coffee shop.”
“Sounds good to me.” Jeremy laughed. “Yes, let’s talk about my mess.”
Alyssa joined him, and Jeremy liked the sound of her soft laugh. While it wasn’t happy or joyous, it wasn’t derisive either. It was light and melodic. It sounded like it hoped for and still believed in better days. “It’s a better subject, for me at least.”
“Okay then...” Jeremy outlined everything that stymied him, and this time Alyssa hung on his every word. It surprised him how much he revealed, all the fears he couldn’t share with Ryan, the things that didn’t make sense, even his own deficiencies in solving them. Without realizing it, he went deeper and deeper until he caught words coming from his mouth he hadn’t intended to say. “To have that living room, the popular home where people come and feel welcome, and you’re the host, that’d be a very special place, don’t you think? That’s what I’ve always wanted to create.”
He felt a bloom crawl up his neck. It itched a little as heat spread past his collarbone. It always did when he was embarrassed. “You’ve let me talk way too long.”
“I liked it. You’d be shocked at how few people I’ve actually talked to in the last six months.”
Jeremy smiled as red spread all over Alyssa’s face too.
She rolled her eyes and pressed her palms against her cheeks. “Back to you.”
“Nothing more to say... Everything I thought I knew is wrong. I spent way more than I should have on the renovation and I’m still spending more than I thought, in ways I didn’t anticipate. Marketing in Seattle was transactional, and here it feels relational, but I don’t know what that means, how to be a part of that, and at this rate, in three months I’ll declare bankruptcy and none of it will matter anymore.”
Alyssa shrugged. “If you’re trying to bring Seattle to Winsome, there’s a story about that. The guy who endlessly pushes a boulder up a hill?”
“Sisyphus, that’s me,” Jeremy chuckled. “Laborious and futile.”
“Okay then. Let’s change that.” Alyssa picked her phone up off the table. “Send me everything you’ve got. Not account numbers—delete those for safety—but all transactional data. Your credit card data, receipts, all inputs, then suppliers and such, rent, payroll, insurance, any and every cost, fixed and variable. Plus everything Mrs. Pavlis gave you from the Daily Brew days so that I can compare them.”
