Sometimes, very successful people achieve greatness because they are thrust into a situation that requires them to exceed their old limitations. That's what happens to Victoria here in Chapter 18.
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Zippy's friend Mindy was shy. She was even smaller than Zippy - about the same height, but so thin it would be accurate to call her wispy. Mindy thanked me profusely for giving her and Zippy a new place to live. I got the sense that I would discover that they needed more than housing from the Gaia Foundation. I would get to know them, learning more of their story and seeing what I could do to improve their lives.
In the meantime, Zippy was insatiable. She let me know every day that she was available to have sex anytime she wasn't at the club dancing. Zippy was so relentless - and so charming - that I accepted the invitation often enough to interfere with the relationships with the other women in my life.
The one relationship I was careful to maintain was my new romance with Victoria. She'd never even been with a man before me, and she was acting exactly the way you'd expect of a woman in love for the very first time. We had what we jokingly called "working lunches" where we'd go to her condo in the middle of the day, make love, then go back to work and pretend nothing had happened. The staff knew exactly what had happened. It was delicious. Nooners. We felt like we were getting away with something, even though our antics were common knowledge.
Victoria did something very creative, and she allowed me to play a role. She'd been so oppressed by her parents for so long that she spent a lot of time proving to them that they'd been completely wrong about her in every conceivable way. When it came time to select a company car, she got a Cadillac Escalade because she knew her father thought that was the best car on the road. It was more expensive than he could afford, and I guess his eyes got big and round the first time Victoria visited her family in that car.
The problem was, Victoria didn't particularly like the Escalade. It was too big, it burned too much gas, and was no fun to drive. She spent a lot of time complaining to her parents about the Escalade's lousy mileage; she knew her father was one of those people who thought global warming was a socialist myth and that it was his duty as an American to support the oil and coal companies as much as possible.
Victoria came up with a very clever way to demonstrate that she disagreed with most of the things her parents believed, and she usually did it by reminding them she was far more successful than they could ever be. She wasn't nasty, but she did manage to come up with some excellent passive aggressive tactics, and I was pleased when she asked for my help with a particularly creative stunt.
Instead of Escalades, Victoria's personal choice of transportation was Teslas. She liked that the cars used no fossil fuel, and she loved that they were so advanced in so many ways. If you haven't driven a Tesla, you should. It's like having a car from the 23rd century.
Victoria was particularly anxious to try out the self-driving mode. Statistics show you are much safer in a self-driving car, and drivers claim it makes everything less stressful. People with no quantitative skills imagine computers can't possibly be as good as human drivers. Think about that. Every time we give computers a job formerly done by people, the computers always are better. Every time. They're computers. It's what they do.
When it was time to renew her lease, Victoria got rid of the Escalade and got a Tesla. She got a nice big one, built like a tank designed by the House of Lamborghini. She got a big black SUV, and she was happy to point out that electricity cost so much less than gas it was more economical than the smallest gas powered car on the road.
Victoria described her plan for letting her parents know about her new car, and I was honored when she said she wanted my help.
First of all, Victoria didn't tell them of her plans to get a Teslas. She wanted it to be a surprise. She'd borrowed some book from her sister, and she wanted me to go with her when she returned it. The story was that we were running some errand for the foundation and just happened to be in the neighborhood. They lived out in a rural area I'd never "happened" to visit in the past, and I didn't expect to go there in the future, but that was our story and I was instructed to stick to it.
Victoria drove to her parents' home and verified there were three cars - one each for her mother, father and sister. "They're all here!" Victoria said. "Goody goody goody!"
She pulled in the driveway, knocked on the door, then walked inside with me behind her. "It's me! Victoria! I've got someone for you to meet!"
Her mother came out, then her sister, and finally her father, who looked just as stern and constipated as I'd expected. "Folks, this is my boss, David Lightfoot. He founded the Gaia Foundation. David, these are my folks."
"I've heard a lot about you," I said truthfully. "It's nice to be able to have faces to go with your names." Have you seen that classic picture
American Gothic
, that features a married farm couple looking very stern and very plain? Victoria's parents looked exactly like that. Exactly. The sister looked normal, but the parents reminded me of characters from a horror movie about farmers who kidnap innocent victims and turn them into sausages.
"You have a very impressive daughter," I said. "I'm lucky she agreed to run our foundation. It's a very challenging job, but you must know as well as I do that Victoria is the kind of person capable of answering any challenge. She consistently exceeds every expectation."
That last part wasn't one of the things Victoria asked me to say. I improvised. I got into the spirit of destroying everything her parents had always believed about Victoria, and I thought that was a nice little addition.
"Come look at my new car!" Victoria said, taking her mother's hand and pulling her outside. There was her big imposing Tesla, looking like some machine beamed down from the starship Enterprise.
"Watch this!" she said, pushing a button on her keyfob. Two gull-wing doors rose silently. Victoria whispered in my ear. "My Dad probably believes that if God had intended us to drive gull-wing cars, He would not have invented doors that open from the side."
"I've never ridden in a Tesla before this, but I can confirm that it is very, very easy to get in and out of this car," I said. "And the doors are part of the reason Teslas are the safest car on the road. They are almost bulletproof in a crash."
That was the part of the pitch Victoria asked me to make.
"This thing is so smooth and quiet I just love it," she said. "It's heavy, and it's got big tires, but because it uses electricity instead of gas, this big SUV is like a car that gets hundreds of miles per gallon."
Her mother looked impressed, but her father looked like he was getting more constipated by the minute. "I haven't had time to use the self-driving feature much, but it's been wonderful so far. It makes driving less stressful, and much safer."
Her father snorted. "You'll never see me get a self-driving car. Those things are death traps."
It was my turn. "Actually, the data shows that self-driving cars are much, much safer. It stands to reason. Computers never get distracted by texting. They don't get road rage. They never take their eyes off the road. They don't put on make-up while driving, or try to eat a burger with one hand while steering with the other. Besides, computers always perform better than people."
"I'll never do it," he said.
And now, the killer...
"You may not have a choice," I said. "The insurance companies are talking about refusing to cover damages from accidents caused by human drivers. The day is coming when they won't sell cars that aren't self-driving."
I thought I could see steam rising from Dad's forehead. It was a very satisfying feeling.
We spent a few more minutes talking about what a great job Victoria was doing managing a foundation with more than $50 million in assets, but it was eventually time to leave. We had work to do. Places to go. People to see. It would have been hard for them to ignore the idea that the daughter they'd repressed so cruelly for so long was now a Very Important Person. Stevie Wonder and Helen Keller could have seen it.
"Thank you for doing that," Victoria said as we drove away. "You're the only person in the world I'd ask to help me."
"I enjoyed every nanosecond. Thank you for inviting me. My feeling is that challenging the beliefs of small minded people is a calling. A divine mission. We were doing God's work back there."
Victoria laughed. Neither one of us believed in any of the many gods humanity has invented over the ages. It was a humorous way to talk about the shortcomings of people who blame God for every toxic, small-minded belief they've ever held. I found myself hoping Victoria's parents - especially her father - live a long, long time. Victoria was on a rocket to the pinnacle of success, and it was nice to imagine what they'd think when she (metaphorically) landed on the moon.
That's one small step for a woman, one giant leap for womankind.
"The next time you try this, it might be amusing to express support for the practice of giving tax breaks for electric cars. Right wingers constantly complain that those tax breaks are some kind of commie plot to destroy oil companies. Get your father to repeat the bullshit dogma, then point out that 80 percent of the energy subsidies in America go to oil and coal companies."
"Really? Is that true?"
"I read it in the
Wall Street Journal
. It caught my attention. The reporter claimed that fossil fuel companies would probably collapse without corporate welfare. Green energy is so much cheaper they would annihilate the dirty energy sources if they just had a level playing field."
"Really? I never heard that. We could change the world if we just stopped giving subsidies to dirty industries."
"True that."
As you know, I'd read that in the news, so I'd seen those thoughts expressed by a reporter. For some reason, I felt the idea was more important after hearing it repeated by Victoria.
More on that later.
"Why don't you call your appointment secretary and tell her something came up, and you can't come back to the office this afternoon?" I said.
"Something came up?" Victoria asked, grinning. She reached over and began massaging the front of my pants. That's another advantage to self-driving cars. Hand jobs can be done in complete safety. I doubt that I'll ever mention that particular application to Victoria's father, but I'm sure his reaction would be memorable.
I had a full-fledged boner by the time we got to our parking garage. Victoria had a couple of files in her back seat, so she gave them to me. I held them in front of my pants as we rode the elevator to Victoria's floor. There were a few other people in the elevator, but they were too involved in their own conversation to know or care about the status of my erection. Victoria was very amused, which is a good thing, I guess.
