“Did that handsome grandson of yours bring you to the airport today?” Zwena casually inquires, followed by a long draw from her Starbucks cup. I bug my eyes out at her, hoping she is picking up myno you did not and don’t you dare make one more grandson referencewarning. I know Zwena—every word she says has veiled intentions, and she doesn’t care a lick about the consequences. Both these women should consider investing in a filter before they have no friends left.
Mrs. Eisenberg looks puzzled as to how Zwena might know about her grandson. I take the pause as the perfect opportunity to hit the gas.
“Catch up with you later, Z. We’re gonna be late, and Mrs. Eisenberg has a mah-jongg tournament to get to in Scottsdale.”
“I’m taking that Elaine down,” Mrs. Eisenberg snarls. “She thinks she’s so great. Ate half the shortbread cookies I put out at the last game I hosted at my house. Didn’t even mutter so much as athank you.”
“Listen to petty Betty here,” Zwena teases, not one bit surprised by Mrs. Eisenberg’s fighting words. “So fierce. I love it!
“I’ll talk to you after my shift, Toni,” Zwena promises, her palm on the hood of my cart letting me know that she knows exactly what I’m trying to do by hitting the gas—avoiding the line of questioning she was preparing to Ready. Aim. Fire.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14
5:22 p.m. (Krish)
Some chick tried to slip me a hundo to tell her boyfriend the plane is oversold. She doesn’t want to go trekking in Patagonia with this dude or apparently date him anymore either.
I’m ten minutes late getting out the door, but I have to acknowledge Krish’s text right away. First, I loop in Zwena because Krish is usually stingy sharing any airport gossip, being more a voyeur than a commentator. When Krish puts it out there, we have to keep his verbal spigot open before we lose his stream of consciousness. Plus, Zwena will be so pissed if she finds out I know anything even remotely juicy before she does.
5:22 p.m. (Toni)
Did you take it?
5:23 p.m. (Krish)
Nah. Would you? She seems a little psycho, but she’s also kinda cute. I may call her up to the counter in a few and get her number.
5:24 p.m. (Zwena)
I’d take it. The money, not the number.
Of course Zwena would. With a legion of older female cousins from Magongo who were sent off into arranged marriages to lighten strained family financial loads, she does not turn down money. Zwena wanted the same life she saw vacationing tourists enjoying when she accompanied her father on an under-the-table weekend carpentry job at Diani Beach, not one as a city sanitation worker like her father or a laundress like her mother.
Even living in one of the improving settlements, Zwena knew that her chances of being married off were far greater than her chances of learning to snorkel. So she made herself indispensable to the principal of the school her parents scraped together shillings to pay for. It was eventually the principal’s sister, who worked as a domestic in Nairobi for theNew York Times’s East Africa bureau chief, who helped Zwena obtain a visa to come to the United States.
Zwena speaks nostalgically about growing up in the coastal town, rarely disparaging the poverty and desperation that grip much of Kenya, but she also pays forward her good fortune of landing in the Bay Area by rescuing women she thinks may be stuck in a no-win situationship. It’s why she’s the best possible friend to complain about Simon to, always there to listen and devotedly take my side. I also know right where that hundred would go—in her bra. I’ve offered to go shopping with Zwena for a wallet, even got her an adhesive money pocket for the back of her cell phone, but she claims storing shillings in her triple-D bra is what got her to California in the first place, and she’s not messing with her banking system.
I could spend all day texting with these two, but the clock’s ticking, and I know Zwena will be taking it from here with her lightning-fast fingers. Hustling out the door barefoot, shoes in my bag, I catch a quick glimpse of my hair in a disheveled bun, my eyes sitting on pillows ofdark circles. I decide to take my hair out of its perpetual topknot and go curls down to distract from my puffy face after three early-morning airport shifts in a row. I realize the T-shirt I have on is one Zwena left at my house, the V-neck hanging too low down my chest, but I’ve run out of time to change. I adjust the shirt, shifting the neckline back, grab my travel coffee mug to keep me alert in class, and now have only twenty minutes to make it up University Avenue.
Tonight is my second Pioneering Entrepreneurs class at the Knight Management Center at Stanford through the university’s extension offerings. Last week, I showed up for my first 5:30 p.m. lecture twenty minutes early, done up in my best magenta wrap dress and platform espadrilles, nervous as hell. Tentatively walking into the empty hall, I was reminded that it had been close to two decades since I had been inside a classroom at one of the top universities in the country. I sat down in the aisle, dead center, and took a few deep breaths to give my brain and my confidence time to warm up before I had to start thinking. As I inhaled, I noticed it smelled smart inside the room, like brain sweat. The second thing I noticed as others began to wander in and find seats was that my fellow classmates, all about a decade or so younger than me, were dressed in business casual, most likely coming from some world-renowned entity of capitalism on Sand Hill Road.
One glimpse of a sockless loafer and tailored trousers and I began to doubt what I was doing there. As these young executives greeted each other, obviously familiar with one another through work meetings and happy hours in downtown Palo Alto, I realized my classmates were here to polish their careers, not find one. They were adding to their elite education to ensure their professional advancement and enhance their networks. They weren’t like me, here to get a life. They already had one.
Watching pristine laptops pulled out of buttery leather sleeves, I grabbed my purse and moved to the back of the room so no one would see the yellow legal notepad and Bic pen I was using. With only one laptop at home shared between me, Coco, and Lou, my computer needsalways come after their homework. I am one of the few dinosaurs out there who still writes faster than she types.
To calm myself, I popped two Trident sticks into my mouth and went to town gnawing the taste out of them. When the professor walked through the wood-paneled side entrance to the front of the lecture hall, all laptops and tablets lit up and the room quieted. The first class on how to become a tycoon was in session. As the professor began to talk, my feelings of not belonging slowly faded. I was back in a school, the one place I had always shone, and there was no way these suits were going to get a better grade than me.
Unfortunately, that assured outlook was last week. It’s only week two, and I’m already on the struggle bus. Having no time to shower after my shift, I did not want to be sweating, running into the Knight Center smelling of stale air, airplane pretzel residue, and lack of planning. I had submitted my first bit of coursework early, and before my shift, I unloaded the dishwasher and made spaghetti and meat sauce to be ahead of my evening mom duties. But during my tight work-to-home-to-class timeline, I unexpectedly had to wrestle the laptop out of Coco’s hands before she dived into her first homework essay on Shakespeare’sRomeo and Juliet, and Krish texted me with work chatter. All the while I was racing to class, I was praying the timing of traffic lights would be in my favor. Turns out I hit every red light, and now I’m sprinting across campus to make it to the Knight Center before the first third of class is over.
Today, a panel of product giants with their deep-pocketed venture capital partners are speaking to my class, and I do not want to miss one minute of it, given my current efforts at building a seedling lotion empire. I haven’t had the opportunity to hear in person theclawing to the toptale of one, let alone four, victorious entrepreneurs. For me, their stories have lived only on the pages of biographies andFast Companythanks to my public library card.
I am particularly interested in hearing from Libby Starr of No Hurdle Girdle fame, not just because her products keep my waistsnatched but because she spent years hawking blood glucose monitors out of the trunk of her car before becoming an industry icon, rather than the more typical shot-to-fame tale of the young tech tycoons who overpopulate Silicon Valley. It’s a story I’ve got to hear. I also like that she hasn’t lost her smile and her sense of humor, at least according to what I see on Instagram, where she shows off a great collection of coffee mugs. I feel like we may be soul sisters on this caffeine-infused afternoon as droplets of java jump out of my travel mug and stain Zwena’s T-shirt while I hurry across Campus Drive East, bag slung over my chest, pulling on my shoulder.
Breathing heavily, I fall into a front row seat, the only ones that are left since other students have migrated more to the middle and back of the lecture hall after only one class of jockeying for the professor’s favor. The panelists and their venture capital sidekicks are already seated, and the professor is introducing each one of them. I don’t move a muscle, not wanting to rustle around and risk interrupting the flow of introductions. I can’t help but stare at Libby Starr of billion-dollar No Hurdle Girdle, wondering how, with five kids of her own, she doesn’t show up at events late with a shine of flop sweat at her brow. After the introductions of the two speakers following Libby Starr, it finally comes to the background of the panelist sitting directly in front of me, who has been perched mostly in profile listening to the bios of his fellow one percenters.
“I am thrilled to introduce Ash Eisenberg. After ten years as the youngest tenured professor of economics at UCLA ...”
Situated sideways in my new lecture hall, fifteen feet away from me, is my old professor—just as he had been forever ago. I’m in almost the exact same seat I was all those years back, once again ready to hang on Ash Eisenberg’s every word. Even with age and fewer hair follicles, he is as attractive now as he was then.
