Chapter 44: Temptations

March 11, 1987, Cincinnati, Ohio

As I was driving to Cincinnati from Indianapolis, I reflected on the bullet that I'd managed to dodge. After the conversation I'd had with Jessica, I was sure that I couldn't tell her about Stephanie and me. That had been made abundantly clear when she'd said that she couldn't imagine me doing something like that. I'd talk to Bethany about it again, but more than ever, I was convinced that it had to stay completely secret.

As soon as Jessica left for work, I left for Springdale, where I'd have coffee with my dad and Joyce, before heading downtown to meet Dave, Julia, and Cindi at Volstead and Braun. I wanted to talk to my dad and Joyce about the competition, and what we'd heard about the pricing. They were my two investors, and they had as much to lose, if not more, than I did, at least at this point. I could easily get a job, but they would lose their investment, minus what small amount had been paid out so far from their share of the profits.

I spent the rest of the drive thinking about everything that was going on in my life — my wives, Jesse, Elyse and her pregnancy, work, and, perhaps most importantly, Stephie. I had called her on Saturday. She and Jason were happy that Alan Kulwicki had won the pole for Sunday's race at Richmond. She hadn't been her usual chipper self, which I chalked up to the pain medication, or, perhaps, the pain itself. I had hoped that Kulwicki's sixth-place finish and Bill's fourth-place finish had brightened their day and lifted their spirits, at least somewhat. I was still thinking about her when I pulled into the parking lot at Denny's.

"Hi, Dad! Hi, Joyce!" I said as I walked in and sat down in the booth where they were waiting.

They both said 'hello' and the waitress brought me some coffee. My dad spoke first.

"Before we talk about work, I wanted to ask how your friend Stephie is doing."

"About like you'd expect, I guess. She's taking opiate-based painkillers, but she's still going to races with her husband. I'm not sure how much longer she'll be able to do that, but for now, she's hanging in there."

"How are you doing?" Joyce asked. "I know you two are very, very close."

"When she visited in January, she kicked my butt about moping around. She's dealing with it better than I am, that's for sure. I'm resigned to what's going to happen, but for now, I'm fine. It'll be different when, well, you know."

"I do. You took Birgit's death pretty hard, but now you have some time to process it before it happens. Just let your wives and Bethany help you."

"I will," I answered, remembering Joyce's role in helping me get over the initial shock of Birgit's death. "Before we get to business, how's Jake?"

"Great! We haven't set the date yet, but it'll be sometime late this year. I need to get everything sorted out in Cincinnati so I can spend time down in King's Bay with him. Nancy is learning quickly, and she's handling most day-to-day issues now. So, what's going on?"

"I told you both, briefly, about the issue with Boston Legal Systems. Our concern is that if they are willing to work at a loss to steal customers from us, or beat us in a deal, we're going to have some potentially serious problems. Right now, we've only come up against the one deal in Pittsburgh, but they offered Ben van Hoek's firm 50% off if they converted from our software to theirs. They charge a bit less than we do for maintenance, so over several years, they'd make back most of that cost."

"You're right in what you said on the phone," my dad said. "You can't get into a bidding war with them and stay profitable. Of course, the opposite problem is not getting any new business or losing existing customers if you don't. What strategy did you come up with?"

"Getting as many new features as we can into the software, continuing to provide top-notch service and support, and communicating regularly with our customers. We hired another programmer to fill the last slot that the Board authorized except for the intern that we'll hire in the Fall. On the plus side, we're generating more leads in California now. According to Ben van Hoek, this company in Boston mostly has customers in Boston and Philadelphia."

"Have you thought about competing directly in those markets?" Joyce asked.

"Yes. We're hoping to get the deal in Pittsburgh, which would be the furthest east we've gone. But Mario is going to start sending marketing materials to firms in Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC, and New York City."

"What about the medical software?" my dad asked.

"Right now, we're trying to keep it to Chicago and Milwaukee. There have been some issues, but mostly with teaching people how to use the software. We're going to redesign the screens in a few modules to make them easier to use. We're focusing on that, but it's also not getting as much attention because we really need to get our next release of the legal software out. Once Charlie finishes the work for Ashe Construction, she'll most likely be back working on the medical software."

"You don't want to let that software languish," my dad said, "but I think, given your resources, what you're doing makes sense. I know it's only March, but what are you planning to do with your programmers in Waukesha at the end of the year?"

"Julia, Dave, and I have talked about it and there really isn't much we can do until closer to the end of the year. We'll look for other consulting contracts, and we'll look for other opportunities to use them. Both of them could work on our other software packages, but that would put us more or less at break-even overall, assuming our business development continues apace. Our goal is to get to a point where our maintenance agreements cover all of our operating expenses."

"It sounds like you have everything as well in hand as we could hope at this point," my dad observed. "Keep a close eye on the trend in your business development and how it compares to last year. If you see anything that concerns you, let us know right away so we can help you formulate a plan."

"We will," I said.

"I meant to ask you before, how is Elyse doing?"

"Just fine. She has no complaints and her OB/GYN is happy with the pregnancy. You should have another grandson by the middle of June."

"I heard from Harry that Bethany is getting married here in Milford on June 20th!"

"Yes, to her Navy Lieutenant. He's a great guy, and a good friend. And he can give Bethany what she really needs in terms of a future."

"When does Jessica find out where she's doing her Residency?" Joyce asked.

"Next Thursday. It's pretty much a lock that she'll be at UofC. Doctor Barton told me privately that they put Jessica first on their list for an Emergency Medicine Residency and she listed them first. While something odd could happen, it's highly unlikely because UofC has three slots open in Emergency Medicine."

"Are you still meeting Larry for lunch today?" she asked.

"Yes. When we finish our coffee, I'll head to UC and we'll have lunch."

We finished our coffee and chatted for a bit before I had to leave to meet Larry. I shook hands with my dad, and Joyce and I exchanged a hug and a quick peck on the lips. I then got into my Daytona and headed onto I-75, which would take me into the city. I arrived at UC about 11:20am and saw Larry waiting for me as he'd promised. I parked, we shook hands, and then walked to Friendly's to have lunch.

"How's nursing school going?" I asked after we placed our orders.

"Great," he said. "It's different from what I would have been doing in medical school, but I'm enjoying it. I'm doing a lot of practical work, rotating through all the different areas, similar to what I'm sure Jessica is doing for her clinical rotations and Sub-Internships. Once I finish in June, I'll be able to take the RN license exam. My undergraduate degree made it pretty easy for me, really."

"That's awesome. Will you work in Cincinnati?"

"At least at first. I'm not tied to the area, so if there are opportunities in Columbus or Louisville or Indianapolis, I'd look at those, too. How are things going with you?"

"Fantastic, really. Everything is going really well. The only dark spot is my friend Stephie."

He nodded, "I heard from Joyce that she's terminal."

"Yeah," I sighed. "Are you still seeing Drew?"

"Yes. We're not living together, but we go out a lot. He's a good man."

"I'm happy for you," I said. "I guess I know now why you weren't interested in Birgit."

He smiled, "Yes. I wasn't sure if you had figured it out, but knowing you, you wouldn't have cared if you had."

"I'm not sure when I figured it out, really. But you're right, it's not something that mattered to me one way or the other. It's not like I have a conventional relationship myself."

"True, though your situation can appear normal to a casual observer. In our case, that's not true. I suspect that Jennifer and Josie have encountered some of that."

"A bit," I said. "But for some reason, people seeing two girls together doesn't bother them as much as seeing two guys together. Sorry to change the subject, but I assume Joyce told you that Elyse is pregnant, and I'll have another son in early June."

Larry laughed, "She did. You're going to have a house full of kids!"

The waitress brought our food, and we started eating.

"You should come visit sometime this Summer," I said. "I know Jennifer would love to see you."

"I'd like that. I'll let you know what's possible once I finish school and find a job."

We ate our lunch and talked. I hoped that we could create a close friendship — something we should have done ten years before.

"How's your chess career?" I asked as we finished eating.

"Good. I won the citywide tournament at the end of last year and finished third in the statewide tournament. I can't really compete in anything outside the region because of school. Once I get settled in a job, I'll look at playing in some national tournaments. Do you still play?"

"Some. I'm sure I'll play tonight at Becky's house. Jennifer and I play occasionally, as do Jessica and I. I just don't have the time to play competitively."

"But you earned your black belt, right?"

"I did. And I'm going to start skydiving again this Summer. Between those two things, plus family and work, I'm going to be pretty busy."

We finished our lunch, and I left the tip and paid the bill. We walked out of the restaurant, shook hands, and Larry headed back to campus while I headed to Volstead and Braun. I met my co-workers in the lobby, and the receptionist took us back to Ben van Hoek's office, where he greeted us and handed me the diskettes to install the demo of Boston Legal Systems' software.

I inserted each diskette in turn and started up the BLS software. I could see right away that their initial menu screen was cleaner and better organized than ours. Cindi noticed right away as well.

"We need to clean up our menu screen," she said. "I wonder if we could make it customizable by job function."

"That's a good idea," Julia said, making some notes. "If we do that, we'd need some kind of sign-on so we'd know which menu to display."

"That would be good because then we could track who made a specific change, too," Dave said.

"Their data entry screens aren't as well laid out as ours," Cindi said as I created my first record.

I ran through the basic tasks and we took notes on things where we were better, and things where we could improve. When I finished, Dave sat down and began running through a list of tests that he'd brought with him. He found several bugs in the software, some of which were pretty basic.

"I'm not sure that they're doing good QA," Dave said. "We would never have released with a couple of these bugs."

"Do you think maybe they just shipped their 1.0 version because they had a deadline to meet?" I asked.

"It's possible, but we decided from the beginning that we wouldn't ship with certain kinds of bugs."

"So, how do we make use of this knowledge?" Julia asked.

"It's something we point out about our software," Cindi said. "We talk about the extensive testing that we do, the fact that we publish our known bug list, and how quickly we fix bugs."

"You know, another thing we could do is publish a monthly newsletter," I said. "We could include information about upcoming releases, known bugs, tips on how to use the software, and maybe a client profile."

"That would be a good way to help maintain good relations with our customers," Cindi said. "But we have a number of different types of customers. Some of the content would be common, but some would really only apply to lawyers or doctors or construction companies."

"Cindi, I'd say this is something for your team," I said. "Do you agree, Julia?"

"I do," Julia agreed. "And honestly, with what I've seen so far, I'm not really worried about this. We should easily win any head-to-head competition, especially once Steve finishes the new search system. But we have a lot of design work to add in the new features we're talking about."

"Look at this," Dave said. "They have a way for the users to define reports. It's rudimentary, and I think I can design a better one, but it's a great idea."

We spent the next three hours playing with the software and then asked Ben van Hoek if we could borrow a conference room to talk through what we'd found. He agreed and showed us to a small room just off reception.

"I think I have a good idea how to position our software against theirs," Cindi said. "And I think we have a good story to tell. But we have to assume that they are at least as smart as we are, and that they're doing the same thing that we are. And that's true even if they aren't. Someone else will come along at some point. I don't think they've seen our software yet, because we haven't sent any demos out east and none of our other customers have said anything. But that won't last long. And it's also possible that it did happen, and our customer didn't tell us."

"The amount of stuff we have just from today is pretty much a full release," Dave observed. "We were already planning on calling the search release 2.0. It's going to be huge now, and I don't know that we can complete it all by our planned date, even with the additional help. I'm thinking we'll need to do a 2.5 release, or we'll have to delay."

"Let's think about that and we can discuss it Monday after the staff meeting," Julia said. "We'll go over the feature list and decide what we want to put in version 2.0 and what needs to wait for 2.5 or whatever we want to call it."

"I agree," I said. "I'd say this was a very useful and productive trip."

"So, confront or avoid?" Cindi asked.

"Confront," I said.

"Confront," Dave and Julia agreed.

"I think we have a plan," I said.