The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(58)
Greta gestured toward the window. “We could have had dinner anywhere. I can’t believe you went to all this trouble. I’m not exactly what you’d call high-maintenance.”
“Well, how do I put this?” Carter asked as he looked around nervously, as though searching for the right words. “We’re here because, honestly, this view is hard to beat. And I wanted to have dinner with you, because…”
He hesitated.
“We matched up on Syren.”
Greta furrowed her brow and stared back. “That’s impossible. I’m not on the app, and besides, that would be a conflict of interest. Also, just plain… weird.”
Carter leaned forward. He cleared his throat and smiled. “You know, I didn’t get to where I am in the tech industry without being able to decode a thing or two.”
Greta noticed another note on the window, an A for anarchy. She sat back, her fingers drumming the table. She squinted at Carter. “You found Zoe, didn’t you?”
“Would you be upset if I said yes?”
Greta felt equally impressed, embarrassed, and exposed. “That’s my superuser account, in case you’re wondering. I created Zoe as an identity for testing and debugging the app, not for actual dating or anything even remotely close to that.”
Carter rubbed his chin, deep in thought. “But she’s you. Isn’t she?”
Greta tried not to wince. She named the account after her grandmother, Zou yi, who went by Zoe. She’d never married, never settled down in the traditional sense, and had gotten pregnant late in life because she wanted a child. But Greta had filled out the questionnaire honestly. Perhaps she’d been too honest.
She sighed and then nodded, reluctantly.
“What do you think that means?” Carter asked.
Greta thought of all the rumored things Carter had been accused of, the payoffs, the settlements, the ongoing whisper campaign. Was all of that conjecture, jealous speculation, emerald-colored rumors seen through a warped lens of jealously? Or were the stories all true and she was just as bad as he was? Maybe that’s why she always failed to make lasting emotional connections outside her family, and even that had often been a struggle growing up.
“I’d say that some people’s hearts are like the bottom of the ocean,” Greta answered. “Largely unexplored.”
* * *
After a bottle of Moroccan wine, the chef and his staff brought out an aromatic and elegantly presented dinner, featuring courses of freshly smoked samaki, something delightfully called bunny chow, which was chicken curry on a fresh half-loaf, couscous made of fermented cassava, stewed Senegalese sweet potatoes with black-eyed peas, Egyptian falafel, followed by Malva pudding and mini mandazi, still warm and covered in powdered sugar. All of which was accompanied by a pair of ice-cold Kenyan beers, which they drank straight from the can.
“What do you think?” Carter asked as he pushed away from the table.
“I think having a private chef is greatly underrated.” Greta enjoyed trying new things, and the company, while awkward, wasn’t as horrible as she imagined. In fact, he’d been a gentleman, and most of their dinner conversation was less of a date and more of a master class in software programming and database engineering, with deep questions about how Greta arrived at her array of mathematical formulas and the AI employed to harvest user data and assign matches.
“And what do you think about the future of Syren?” he asked.
Greta looked out the window as running lights from freighters and ferries glided across the dark waters of Puget Sound. Then she saw her reflection. She looked like her grandmother, Zoe, whom she’d seen only in old black-and-white photos.
“I’m guessing as our silent benefactor, you know more than I know.”
“I know that you’re about to change tax brackets,” Carter said. “The investment bank that’s underwriting next week’s IPO has raised the estimated stock price from four dollars a share to twenty-three dollars. A lot of that has to do with your programming, your algorithms.”
Greta tried not to think about what her net worth might be in a year, which was when she would be able to use her stock options to buy shares of Syren. She’d been given four hundred thousand options. At the projected price of $23 a share, that would be roughly $9,200,000. And the stock price might even be higher by then. What would Carter make—five hundred million? A billion?
What is that even like? Greta wondered. She didn’t come from money, and with her student loans, she’d had a negative net worth since she was eighteen. Next week she’d potentially be worth millions, at least on paper. But she didn’t get into this business for money. Relationships were just another problem to solve.
She asked, “Don’t you suppose some of that has to do with the fact that people are realizing that a dating app run by women nets different, more sustainable results?”
“Oh, it’s different all right.” Carter smiled. “I noticed that right away when I came by the office. It’s not every day that I’m the only Y chromosome in the building.”
There was an awkward moment of silence as he refilled her water glass.
“Speaking of being the visiting rooster in the henhouse,” Greta was just tipsy enough to ask. “I’m sure you’re aware that there are a lot of unflattering rumors about you. How you belong to a certain club of bad boy billionaires. I appreciate dinner and am happy you’ve taken an interest in my work and all, but…”